Search

Background: Between 20 % and 30 % of teens suffer from depression or anxiety before reaching adulthood, and up to half also use or misuse alcohol. Although theories suggest bidirectional links between harmful alcohol use (e.g., binge drinking) and internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression and anxiety), empirical evidence to-date has been mixed. Systematic reviews have attributed mixed findings to limitations in study design, such as the utilization of between-person analyses and the focus on unidirectional effects. The goal of this study was to address these limitations by assessing bidirectional within-person associations between internalizing symptoms and binge drinking over the course of 5 years in the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) sample, a large cohort recruited at ages 12-21 and followed annually on substance use and psychiatric functioning., Methods: We used latent curve models with structured residuals to examine within-person lagged associations between depression, anxiety, and past month counts of binge drinking using NCANDA data (N = 831). Analyses were supplemented with post-hoc power simulations., Results: We found marginal evidence linking binge drinking with subsequent depression symptoms one year later among females. We found no evidence that depression or anxiety predicted subsequent binge drinking despite sufficient power., Conclusions: Social and cognitive consequences of binge drinking may predict later depression symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood for young women, though there was little evidence favoring self-medication models for binge drinking. We note several moderating variables and common factor mechanisms that may better explain this link., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: The cerebellum is a target of alcoholism-related brain damage in adults, yet no study has prospectively tracked deviations from normal cerebellar growth trajectories in adolescents before and after initiating drinking., Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging tracked developmental volume trajectories of 10 cerebellar lobule and vermis tissue constituents in 548 no/low drinking youths age 12 to 21 years at induction into this 5-site, NCANDA (National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence) study. Over the 3- to 4-year longitudinal examination yielding 2043 magnetic resonance imaging scans, 328 youths remained no/low drinkers, whereas 220 initiated substantial drinking after initial neuroimaging., Results: Normal growth trajectories derived from no/low drinkers indicated that gray matter volumes of lobules V and VI, crus II, lobule VIIB, and lobule X declined faster with age in male youths than in female youths, whereas white matter volumes in crus I and crus II and lobules VIIIA and VIIIB expanded faster in female youths than in male youths; cerebrospinal fluid volume expanded faster in most cerebellar regions of male youths than female youths. Drinkers exhibited accelerated gray matter decline in anterior lobules and vermis, accelerated vermian white matter expansion, and accelerated cerebrospinal fluid volumes expansion of anterior lobules relative to youths who remained no/low drinkers. Analyses including both alcohol and marijuana did not support an independent role for marijuana in alcohol effects on cerebellar gray matter trajectories., Conclusions: Alcohol use-related cerebellar growth trajectory differences from normal involved anterior lobules and vermis of youths who initiated substantial drinking. These regions are commonly affected in alcohol-dependent adults, raising the possibility that cerebellar structures affected by youthful drinking may be vulnerable to age-alcohol interactions in later adulthood., (Copyright © 2019 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The study examined age related changes in the magnitude of the Feedback Related Negativity (FRN) in 8-14 year old children performing a variation of a Go/No-Go task. Participants were presented with four stimuli and tasked with mapping each of them either to a response or to a "no response" by trial and error guided by feedback. Feedback was valid for two stimuli (Go and No-Go) and invalid (.5 positive; .5 negative feedback) for the other two stimuli. The amplitude of the FRN was evaluated as a function of age separately for Go and No-Go trials. The results indicated that while performance on valid Go trials improved with age, accuracy on valid No-Go trials remained stable with age. FRN amplitude was found to be inversely related to age such that smaller FRN amplitudes were observed in older children even after controlling for variance in learning. Additionally, the FRN was found as a predictor of post-learning performance on Go trials but not on No-Go trials, regardless of age. These results do not provide support to the link between the FRN and inhibition control as measured by No-Go performance, but do suggest a link with other executive control abilities called for by the Go condition., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: We assessed sex- and age-dependent differences in a cross-sectional analysis of cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation during sleep in adolescents., Methods: Nocturnal heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) metrics, reflecting ANS functioning, were analyzed across the night and within undisturbed rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep in 149 healthy adolescents (12-22 years; 67 female) from the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence., Results: Nocturnal HR was slower in older, more pubertally advanced boys than in younger boys. In girls, HR did not vary according to age or maturity, although overall HRV and vagal modulation declined with age. Although younger boys and girls had similar HR, the male-female HR difference increased by ~2.4 bpm every year (p < .01, higher in older girls). Boys and girls showed expected increases in total HRV across the night but this within-night "recovery" was blunted in girls compared with boys (p < .05). Also, the non-REM and REM difference in HR was greater in girls (p < .01). Models exploring a role of covariates (sleep, mood, reproductive hormones, activity) in influencing HR and HRV showed few significant effects, apart from sedentary activity (higher in older girls), which partially mediated the sex × age interaction in HR., Conclusions: Sex-related differences in cardiac ANS function emerge during adolescence. The extent to which sex-age divergences in ANS function are adaptive or reflect underlying sex-specific vulnerability for the development of psychopathology and other health conditions in adolescence needs to be determined., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Longitudinal study provides a robust method for tracking developmental trajectories. Yet inherent problems of retesting pose challenges in distinguishing biological developmental change from prior testing experience. We examined factors potentially influencing change scores on 16 neuropsychological test composites over 1year in 568 adolescents in the National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) project. The twice-minus-once-tested method revealed that performance gain was mainly attributable to testing experience (practice) with little contribution from predicted developmental effects. Group mean practice slopes for 13 composites indicated that 60% to ∼100% variance was attributable to test experience; General Ability accuracy showed the least practice effect (29%). Lower baseline performance, especially in younger participants, was a strong predictor of greater gain. Contributions from age, sex, ethnicity, examination site, socioeconomic status, or family history of alcohol/substance abuse were nil to small, even where statistically significant. Recognizing that a substantial proportion of change in longitudinal testing, even over 1-year, is attributable to testing experience indicates caution against assuming that performance gain observed during periods of maturation necessarily reflects development. Estimates of testing experience, a form of learning, may be a relevant metric for detecting interim influences, such as alcohol use or traumatic episodes, on behavior., (Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Studies suggest marijuana impacts gray and white matter neural tissue development, however few prospective studies have determined the relationship between cortical thickness and cannabis use spanning adolescence to young adulthood. This study aimed to understand how heavy marijuana use influences cortical thickness trajectories across adolescence. Subjects were adolescents with heavy marijuana use and concomitant alcohol use (MJ+ALC, n=30) and controls (CON, n=38) with limited substance use histories. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging and comprehensive substance use assessment at three independent time points. Repeated measures analysis of covariance was used to look at main effects of group, time, and Group × Time interactions on cortical thickness. MJ+ALC showed thicker cortical estimates across the brain (23 regions), particularly in frontal and parietal lobes (ps<.05). More cumulative marijuana use was associated with increased thickness estimates by 3-year follow-up (ps<.05). Heavy marijuana use during adolescence and into young adulthood may be associated with altered neural tissue development and interference with neuromaturation that can have neurobehavioral consequences. Continued follow-up of adolescent marijuana users will help understand ongoing neural changes that are associated with development of problematic use into adulthood, as well as potential for neural recovery with cessation of use., (Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Alcohol intoxication often results in negative consequences; however, specific behavioral and subjective effects vary as a function of individual differences. The present study utilized an alcohol challenge paradigm to examine whether heavy binge social drinkers (HD; n=77), compared to light social drinkers (LD; n=55), exhibit: (1) greater tolerance in psychomotor task performance under the influence of alcohol, and (2) differential perceptions of the impairing effects of alcohol. The study included three test sessions in which participants consumed either a low (0.4 g/kg) or a high (0.8 g/kg) dose of ethanol or a placebo beverage administered in random order and counterbalanced within group. Participants completed the Digit-Symbol Substitution Task (DSST) and the Grooved Pegboard at pre-drink baseline and at multiple time points after beverage consumption. They also completed a scale of perceived impairment at several intervals after beverage consumption. Ethanol impaired performance at the high dose, but not at the low dose (ps<.001). The groups exhibited similar alcohol-induced impairment. However, HD reported lower self-perceived impairment compared to LD, particularly during the early portion of the blood alcohol curve when actual impairment was most pronounced (p<.001). Thus, this study extends prior research in that habitual binge social drinking does not appear to be associated with tolerance to alcohol's impairing effects on select psychomotor skills. Further, results may have implications for alcohol-related harm as binge social drinkers regularly consume intoxicating doses of alcohol but may not be aware of the physical and cognitive impairments produced by alcohol.