The long-term objectives of this study are to identify the neural substrates of alcohol cue reactivity among non-alcohol drinking youth, and investigate its contribution to the risk for developing alcohol use disorders. The Applicant is experienced in adolescent alcohol use research and alcohol cue reactivity, but is relatively new to neuroimaging and here proposes a program of training in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
The specific aims for this project are to utilize a previously created alcohol cue reactivity task during fMRI in adolescents without and with a family history positive of alcohol use disorders (FHP), all with minimal alcohol use experiences (i.e., 1 to 10 lifetime alcohol drinks and never 4 or more drinks on an occasion). Youths will be followed one year after initial assessment to re-evaluate drinking patterns (i.e., frequency, intensity, and recency of use). For this project, 30 healthy adolescents will be recruited from an ongoing longitudinal neuroimaging project in the laboratory of Dr. Susan Tapert (Sponsor). Participants will be 12 to 14 years of age: 15 FHP and 15 healthy controls matched for age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. As part of the proposed project, participants will undergo a neuroimaging session with the alcohol cue reactivity task. Neuroimaging data will be processed and statistically analyzed using AFNI (Analysis of Functional Neuroimages) and behavioral data (i.e., responses and reaction times) will be analyzed with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).
Specific aim 1 will contrast brain response to alcohol images between FHP and control youth.
Specific aim 2 will use baseline brain response to alcohol images to predict drinking in the subsequent year. Results will inform us about whether youth with a major risk factor for drinking problems (i.e., FHP) show abnormal alcohol cue response prior to the onset of personal drinking, and elucidate how reactivity to alcohol stimuli, prior to experiencing regular alcohol use, may predict alcohol use initiation and escalation.
This research is relevant to public health as it will help us examine alcohol cue reactivity as one of the contributing mechanisms of risk for alcohol use disorders among youth. This information can be of great use when developing alcohol use prevention efforts, particularly since recent research suggests 39% of 8th graders have tried alcohol, increasing to 72% of students by 12th grade (Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, &Schulenberg, 2008).
| Squeglia, Lindsay M; Sorg, Scott F; Schweinsburg, Alecia Dager et al. (2012) Binge drinking differentially affects adolescent male and female brain morphometry. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 220:529-39 |
| Squeglia, Lindsay M; Schweinsburg, Alecia Dager; Pulido, Carmen et al. (2011) Adolescent binge drinking linked to abnormal spatial working memory brain activation: differential gender effects. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 35:1831-41 |
| Pulido, Carmen; Mok, Alex; Brown, Sandra A et al. (2009) Heavy drinking relates to positive valence ratings of alcohol cues. Addict Biol 14:65-72 |
