Psychobiology of Stress and Alcohol Craving

The long-term aim is the definition of a setup of mobile sensors and their integration in a mobile infrastructure that allows the prediction of stress related alcohol intake in an ambulatory setting. In patients with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) stress exposure is known to affect craving, cue-reactivity and relapse risk. Here, the investigators aim to identify stress- and alcohol cue-related physiological markers in a lab experiment to assess interactions between acute psychological stress exposure and alcohol cue-exposure regarding their effects on alcohol craving and related markers (attentional bias to alcohol-cues, implicit association task, neural cue-reactivity). In addition to applying established stress-related markers (cortisol in saliva, heart-rate variability, systolic blood pressure and electrodermal activity), the investigators will integrate innovative measures currently under investigation (e.g. voice stress analysis) to identify whether these additional parameters increase the predictive significance.