[Long-term follow-up on alcohol use in a big company after brief intervention by a company physician]. / Längsschnittuntersuchung alkoholauffälliger Mitarbeiter in einem Grossbetrieb nach werksärztlicher Kurzintervention.

BACKGROUND: Many examinations have shown that brief medical interventions are useful when seeking to influence the drinking behavior of problem drinkers and alcohol-dependent subjects. The working environment is particularly useful when trying to influence problematic drinking behavior. Our report is about the long-term effects on alcoholic employees. METHODS: The drinking behavior of 100 employees was categorized according to WHO criteria. By motivational interviewing, the employees were asked to reduce their alcohol consumption or quit completely and then come back at a later control date. The data collected was: drinking behavior (TLFB, time-line follow-back), biological markers (GGT, CDT, MCV), changes in personal situations, and the factors and reasons involved. RESULTS: Forty-five percent of the employees went to their company physician after recommendation by their supervisors, and 24% went on their own initiative. Of the employees examined, 82% were diagnosed as being alcohol-dependent, 4% as harmful abusers, 6% as risky drinkers, and 8% as questionably risky drinkers. At the time of catamnesis, 78% of the employees that were originally diagnosed as alcohol-dependent were abstinent. Of those participants, 17% that were initially classified as not dependent were abstinent, and the overall quantity of alcohol consumed was also reduced significantly by 79.3%. Personal realms especially concerning happiness in life, happiness at work, and physical health improved. CONCLUSION: The results show that a brief medical intervention conducted by a company physician is suited to influencing the drinking behavior of employees effectively and efficiently. The fear of demotion at work and job loss may prove to be a helpful influence on changing drinking behavior.

The effect of superior temporal lesions on the recognition of species-specific calls in the squirrel monkey.

Eleven squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) were trained to discriminate species-specific calls from non-species-specific complex sounds in a go, no-go procedure with social contact as positive reinforcement. The task required that the animals not only responded to a particular call but that this response should be generalized to any squirrel monkey call, whether or not it had been presented previously in training. After having reached a performance level of 75% correct responses in three consecutive sessions, seven animals received bilateral lesions of the auditory cortex; the other four animals served as controls. It was found that small lesions within the superior temporal gyrus did not interfere with the discrimination task. Lesions destroying about three quarters of the auditory cortex led to loss of retention; during retraining the animals did not reach criterion, but performed significantly above chance. These animals were able, however, to master a simplified version of the task where one species-specific call had to be discriminated from one non-species-specific sound. Animals with almost total ablation of the auditory cortex were capable of mastering neither the generalized task nor the simplified version. From these results, together with those of the literature, it is concluded 1) that recognition of complex sounds is not possible after complete auditory cortex ablation, probably because of interference with gestalt-formation processing, and 2) that species-specific calls are processed in the auditory system in the same way as other complex sounds.