Alcohol Cue Reactivity in the Brain: Age-related Differences in the Role of Social Processes in Addiction in Male Drinkers

Overview

Journal J Neurosci Res

Specialty Neurology

Date 2023 Jul 4

PMID 37401734

Authors

Lauren Kuhns

Gabry Mies

Emese Kroon

Ingo Willuhn

Heidi Lesscher

Janna Cousijn

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Social attunement (SA)-the tendency to harmonize behavior with the social environment-has been proposed to drive the escalation of alcohol use in adolescence, while reducing use in adulthood. Little is known about how heightened social sensitivity in adolescence may interact with neural alcohol cue reactivity-a marker of alcohol use disorder-and its relationship to alcohol use severity over time. The aims of this study were to test whether (1) adolescents and adults differ in social alcohol cue reactivity in the nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate cortex, and right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and (2) age moderates the relationship between social alcohol cue reactivity and social attunement, measures of drinking at baseline, and changes in drinking over time. A sample of male adolescents (16-18 years) and adults (29-35 years) completed an fMRI social alcohol cue-exposure task at baseline and an online follow-up two to three years later. No main effects of age or drinking measures were observed in social alcohol cue reactivity. However, age significantly moderated associations of social alcohol cue reactivity in the mPFC and additional regions from exploratory whole-brain analyses with SA, with a positive association in adolescents and negative association in adults. Significant age interactions emerged only for SA in predicting drinking over time. Adolescents with higher SA scores escalated drinking, while adults with higher SA scores reduced drinking. These findings warrant further research on SA as a risk and protective factor and suggest that social processes influence cue reactivity differentially in male adolescents and adults.

References

Sorokowski P, Karwowski M, Misiak M, Marczak M, Dziekan M, Hummel T . Sex Differences in Human Olfaction: A Meta-Analysis. Front Psychol. 2019; 10:242. PMC: 6381007. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00242. View

Sheehan D, Lecrubier Y, Sheehan K, Amorim P, Janavs J, Weiller E . The Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.): the development and validation of a structured diagnostic psychiatric interview for DSM-IV and ICD-10. J Clin Psychiatry. 1999; 59 Suppl 20:22-33;quiz 34-57. View

Martin-Willett R, Helmuth T, Abraha M, Bryan A, Hitchcock L, Lee K . Validation of a multisubstance online Timeline Followback assessment. Brain Behav. 2019; 10(1):e01486. PMC: 6955818. DOI: 10.1002/brb3.1486. View

Ajmani G, Suh H, Wroblewski K, Pinto J . Smoking and olfactory dysfunction: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Laryngoscope. 2017; 127(8):1753-1761. PMC: 6731037. DOI: 10.1002/lary.26558. View

Haxby , Hoffman , Gobbini . The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn Sci. 2000; 4(6):223-233. DOI: 10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01482-0. View

Huang G, Unger J, Soto D, Fujimoto K, Pentz M, Jordan-Marsh M . Peer influences: the impact of online and offline friendship networks on adolescent smoking and alcohol use. J Adolesc Health. 2013; 54(5):508-14. PMC: 4694047. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.07.001. View

Merrill J, Read J . Motivational pathways to unique types of alcohol consequences. Psychol Addict Behav. 2010; 24(4):705-11. PMC: 3326583. DOI: 10.1037/a0020135. View

Kuhn C . Emergence of sex differences in the development of substance use and abuse during adolescence. Pharmacol Ther. 2015; 153:55-78. PMC: 4527891. DOI: 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2015.06.003. View

Nguyen-Louie T, Courtney K, Squeglia L, Bagot K, Eberson S, Migliorini R . Prospective changes in neural alcohol cue reactivity in at-risk adolescents. Brain Imaging Behav. 2017; 12(4):931-941. PMC: 5808897. DOI: 10.1007/s11682-017-9757-0. View

10.

Hingson R, Heeren T, Winter M . Age of alcohol-dependence onset: associations with severity of dependence and seeking treatment. Pediatrics. 2006; 118(3):e755-63. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-0223. View

11.

Crane N, Langenecker S, Mermelstein R . Risk factors for alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette polysubstance use during adolescence and young adulthood: A 7-year longitudinal study of youth at high risk for smoking escalation. Addict Behav. 2021; 119:106944. PMC: 8120743. DOI: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106944. View

12.

Saunders J, Aasland O, Babor T, De la Fuente J, Grant M . Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO Collaborative Project on Early Detection of Persons with Harmful Alcohol Consumption--II. Addiction. 1993; 88(6):791-804. DOI: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1993.tb02093.x. View

13.

Pauli W, Nili A, Michael Tyszka J . A high-resolution probabilistic in vivo atlas of human subcortical brain nuclei. Sci Data. 2018; 5:180063. PMC: 5903366. DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2018.63. View

14.

Chase H, Eickhoff S, Laird A, Hogarth L . The neural basis of drug stimulus processing and craving: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Biol Psychiatry. 2011; 70(8):785-793. PMC: 4827617. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.05.025. View

15.

Cservenka A, Brumback T . The Burden of Binge and Heavy Drinking on the Brain: Effects on Adolescent and Young Adult Neural Structure and Function. Front Psychol. 2017; 8:1111. PMC: 5491846. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01111. View

16.

Schacht J, Anton R, Myrick H . Functional neuroimaging studies of alcohol cue reactivity: a quantitative meta-analysis and systematic review. Addict Biol. 2012; 18(1):121-33. PMC: 3419322. DOI: 10.1111/j.1369-1600.2012.00464.x. View

17.

Larsen H, van der Zwaluw C, Overbeek G, Granic I, Franke B, Engels R . A variable-number-of-tandem-repeats polymorphism in the dopamine D4 receptor gene affects social adaptation of alcohol use: investigation of a gene-environment interaction. Psychol Sci. 2010; 21(8):1064-8. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610376654. View

18.

de Goede J, van der Mark-Reeuwijk K, Braun K, le Cessie S, Durston S, Engels R . Alcohol and Brain Development in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Systematic Review of the Literature and Advisory Report of the Health Council of the Netherlands. Adv Nutr. 2021; 12(4):1379-1410. DOI: 10.1093/advances/nmaa170. View

19.

Chein J, Albert D, OBrien L, Uckert K, Steinberg L . Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain's reward circuitry. Dev Sci. 2011; 14(2):F1-10. PMC: 3075496. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01035.x. View

20.

Kroon E, Mies G, Wiers R, Cousijn J . Development and Validation of the Dutch Social Attunement Questionnaire (SAQ). Soc Dev. 2023; 32(2):546-565. PMC: 10312359. DOI: 10.1111/sode.12652. View