During young adulthood, drinking dramatically increases, with binge-level drinking peaking at age 22 and nearly half of individuals who drink report binge-level alcohol use. Frequent binge alcohol use during the protracted neuromaturation extending into the mid 20s may result in greater brain and cognitive effects than similar alcohol use in later adulthood. This application is in response to RFA-AA-17-005, Continuation of the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) Data Analysis Resource (U24) to determine the predictors and effects of accelerated alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood. NCANDA-2 will follow the initial cohort of 831 participants (ages 12-21 at first visit) from 5 collection sites and acquire the necessary data to advance our understanding of adolescent development and the effects of alcohol use on the adolescent and young adult brain using multimodal neuroimaging, cognitive testing, and behavioral assessment. The examination of alcohol consequences will focus on structural and functional maturation of brain areas that actively develop during adolescence, are involved in psychological regulation, respond to rewards, and appear vulnerable to deleterious effects of alcohol. With the additional longitudinal data provided by this renewal, we will determine the effects of alcohol exposure on the developmental trajectory of the adolescent human brain and identify preexisting psychobiological vulnerabilities that may put an adolescent or young adult at elevated risk for an alcohol use disorder. The Data Analysis Resource (DAR) will 1) oversee data collection with standardization and comparability across sites; 2) perform data analysis for core measures collected at each site; 3) facilitate across-site pooling and centralized data storage; 4) create a database across assessment modalities for efficient retrieval; 5) coordinate data and resource sharing; 6) harmonize data across sites; and 7) create and implement novel, multimodality analyses using machine learning to engage broad spectrum data. The DAR has 5 Specific Aims:
Aim 1. Maintain standardized procedures for collection of neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and clinical assessment data and harmonize with existing large-scale neurodevelopmental research efforts.
Aim 2. Ensure across-site quality control for imaging and neuropsychological data acquisition.
Aim 3. Maintain and advance informatics infrastructure for data submission, analysis, and distribution. a) Maintain a database integrating the diverse and comprehensive data from all NCANDA sites. b) Provide data to consortium PIs for hypothesis testing within and across experimental domains.
Aim 4. Provide macrostructural, microstructural, and fMRI neuroimage processing and analysis.
Aim 5. Develop and maintain a data sharing and distribution system for the scientific public.
The Data Analysis Resource will provide analysis of longitudinal data provided by this renewal to determine the extent to which structural and functional deficits in neurodevelopmental maturation precede, are caused by, or are exacerbated by initiation of appreciable alcohol use in adolescence.
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