| Sumario: | Part of a special issue on women and alcohol. The neuropsychologic and neurophysiologic consequences of long-term alcohol abuse in women are analyzed. Evidence indicates that alcoholic women experience significant deficits when compared with nonalcoholic women over a broad range of neuropsychologic domains. Among the cognitive skills adversely affected by long-term alcohol abuse are perceptual-motor skills, visual-spatial processes, learning/memory, and abstraction/problem solving. Alcoholic women typically report shorter or less severe drinking histories than do men, but both genders are impaired to a similar extent. This suggests that women may be more sensitive than men to alcohol-related cognitive damage, but additional research in this area is needed. With regard to alcohol-related changes in brain structure and electrical activity in alcoholic women, the data are inconsistent. Research is necessary to explain the contradictions and to clarify the association between neuropsychologic and neurophysiologic functions in alcoholic men and women.
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