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The 21st birthday celebration is characterized by extreme alcohol consumption. Accumulating evidence suggests that high-dose bingeing is related to structural brain changes and cognitive deficits. This is particularly problematic in the transition from adolescence to adulthood when the brain is still maturing, elevating the brain's sensitivity to the acute effects of alcohol intoxication. Heavy drinking is associated with reduced structural integrity in the hippocampus and corpus callosum and is accompanied by cognitive deficits. However, there is little research examining changes in the human brain related to discrete heavy-drinking episodes. The present study investigated whether alcohol exposure during a 21st birthday celebration would result in changes to white matter microstructure by utilizing diffusion tensor imaging measures and a quasi-experimental design. By examining structural changes in the brain from pre- to postcelebration within subjects (N = 49) prospectively, we were able to more directly observe brain changes following an extreme-drinking episode. Region of interest analyses demonstrated increased fractional anisotropy in the posterior fornix (p < .0001) and in the body of the corpus callosum (p = .0029) from pre- to postbirthday celebration. These results suggest acute white matter damage to the fornix and corpus callosum following an extreme-drinking episode, which is especially problematic during continued neurodevelopment. Therefore, 21st birthday drinking may be considered an important target event for preventing acute brain injury in young adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional distress disorders are characterized by high daily-life negative affect and impaired positive reappraisal emotion regulation ability. These disorders have been associated with altered frontoinsular functioning in important emotion regulation regions, especially medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and insula, and with structural abnormalities that could be indicative of aberrant underlying connectivity. However, the relationship between frontoinsular activation and structural morphometry with daily-life negative affect is unclear. Using multimodal neuroimaging and ambulatory assessment, individuals with emotional distress disorders (n = 27) completed a positive reappraisal emotion regulation task during scanning and subsequently reported on their daily-life negative affect repeatedly for two weeks. Increased daily-life negative affect was associated with increased medial PFC positive reappraisal activation. In contrast, increased daily-life negative affect was associated with decreased positive reappraisal activation in the left insula and cognitive flexibility regions (putamen and cerebellum). Additionally, increased daily-life negative affect was associated with left insula hypergyria and right posterior/inferior parietal hypogyria. Follow-up psychophysiological interactions analyses found increased daily-life negative affect associated with increased medial PFC-insula functional connectivity during positive reappraisal. Results suggest frontoinsular emotion regulation activation and gyrification abnormalities could be markers of increased daily-life negative affect and important treatment targets for emotional distress disorders.

Background Emerging adulthood is a critical neurodevelopment period in which extreme drinking has a potentially pronounced neurotoxic effect. Therefore, extreme drinking, even a single episode, could be particularly harmful to the developing brain's structure. Relatedly, heavy alcohol use in emerging adults has been associated with structural brain damage, especially in the corpus callosum. However, it is unclear whether and how much a single extreme drinking episode would affect brain morphometry. Methods For the first time in the literature, the current study prospectively examined the impact of an extreme drinking episode (i.e., twenty-first birthday celebration) on the brain morphometry of emerging adults immediately following their birthday celebration (n = 50) and approximately 5 weeks post-birthday celebration (n = 29). Results We found evidence that a single extreme drinking episode was associated with structural changes immediately post-birthday celebration. Specifically, higher twenty-first birthday estimated blood-alcohol concentration was associated with decreased volume of the posterior and central corpus callosum immediately post-birthday celebration. This extreme drinking episode was not associated with further structural changes, or recovery, 5 weeks post-twenty-first birthday celebration. Conclusions Overall, results suggest that a single episode of heavy drinking in emerging adulthood may be associated with immediate structural changes of the corpus callosum. Thus, emerging adulthood, which is characterized by high rates of extreme drinking, could be a critical period for targeted prevention and intervention.

Psychosis is linked to aberrant salience or to viewing neutral stimuli as self-relevant, suggesting a possible impairment in self-relevance processing. Psychosis is also associated with increased dopamine in the dorsal striatum, especially the anterior caudate (Kegeles et al., 2010). Critically, the anterior caudate is especially connected to (a) the cortical default mode network (DMN), centrally involved in self-relevance processing, and (b) to a lesser extent, the cortical frontoparietal network (FPN; Choi, Yeo, & Buckner, 2012). However, no previous study has directly examined striatal-cortical DMN connectivity in psychosis risk. In Study 1, we examined resting-state functional connectivity in psychosis risk (n = 18) and control (n = 19) groups between (a) striatal DMN and FPN subregions and (b) cortical DMN and FPN. The psychosis risk group exhibited decreased connectivity between the striatal subregions and the cortical DMN. In contrast, the psychosis risk group exhibited intact connectivity between the striatal subregions and the cortical FPN. Additionally, recent distress was also associated with decreased striatal-cortical DMN connectivity. In Study 2, to determine whether the decreased striatal-cortical DMN connectivity was specific to psychosis risk or was related to recent distress more generally, we examined the relationship between connectivity and distress in individuals diagnosed with nonpsychotic emotional distress disorders (N = 25). In contrast to Study 1, here we found that distress was associated with evidence of increased striatal-cortical DMN connectivity. Overall, the present results suggest that decreased striatal-cortical DMN connectivity is associated with psychosis risk and could contribute to aberrant salience.

Emotional conflict adaptation involving ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) suppression of the amygdala is thought to be important in emotion regulation, with evidence of impaired implicit emotion regulation in emotional distress disorders. However, it is unclear how this impairment is associated with daily-life emotion dysregulation in emotional distress disorders. In the current study, female participants with an emotional distress disorder (N = 27) were scanned with MRI while completing an implicit emotion conflict regulation task that involved identifying the facial expression of an image while ignoring an overlaid congruent or incongruent affect label. Participants then completed two weeks of ambulatory assessment of daily-life emotion dysregulation. Consistent with previous research on comorbid emotional distress disorders (Etkin and Schatzberg, 2011), there was no behavioral effect of emotional conflict adaptation (p = .701) but a significant effect of congruent adaptation (p = .006), suggesting impairment is specific to implicit emotional conflict regulation. Additionally, there was no neural evidence of emotional conflict adaptation in the ventral ACC and amygdala (ps > .766). Further, in our primary psychophysiological interactions analyses, we examined ventral ACC-amygdala functional connectivity. As hypothesized, increased ventral ACC-amygdala functional connectivity for emotional conflict adaptation was associated with increased daily-life affective instability (p = .022), but not mean daily-life negative affect (p = .372). Overall, results provide behavioral and neural evidence of impaired implicit emotional conflict adaptation in individuals with emotional distress disorders and suggests that this impairment is related to daily-life affective instability in these disorders.

Background Young adulthood has the highest rates of alcohol use and high-risk drinking behavior. This period is also a critical neurodevelopmental stage, with neural insults having a profound neurotoxic effect on the brain. Cortical gyrification is thought, in part, to reflect early brain maturation (e.g., hypogyrification in fetal alcohol syndrome). There is also evidence that cortical gyrification is sensitive to later-life events (e.g., fluctuations in malnutrition in young adults). However, no study has examined how alcohol use in young adulthood is associated with cortical gyrification. Methods We examined the associations between cortical gyrification with lifetime alcohol use and past year hangover symptoms in young adults (N = 78). Results Lifetime alcohol use was associated with hypogyria in multiple cortical regions (rs ≤ -.27, ps ≤ .0159; right orbitofrontal, right temporal pole, and left lateral occipital). Further, past year hangover symptoms were associated with hypogyria (rs ≤ -.27, ps ≤ .0034), overlapping with lifetime alcohol use (right orbitofrontal and left lateral occipital). Hangover symptoms were also uniquely associated with hypogyria of other cortical regions (rs ≤ -.30, ps ≤ .0002; right parahippocampal gyrus, left inferior temporal/parahippocampal gyrus and right anterior insula). Conclusions Thus, results suggest that young adulthood is a critical period for targeted prevention and intervention, especially for individuals exhibiting heavy alcohol consumption and high-risk drinking behavior.

BACKGROUND: Emerging adulthood is a critical neurodevelopmental stage, with alcohol use during this period consistently associated with brain abnormalities and damage in anatomical structure and white matter integrity. However, it is less clear how alcohol use is associated with the brain's structural organization (i.e., white matter connections between anatomical regions). Recent connectome research has focused on rich-club regions, a collection of highly-interconnected hubs that are critical in brain communication and global network organization and disproportionately vulnerable to insults.METHODS: For the first time, we examined alcohol use associations with structural rich-club and connectome organization in emerging adults (N = 66).RESULTS: Greater lifetime drinks and current monthly drinks were significantly associated with lower rich-club organization (rs =-0.38, ps < 0.003) and lower rich-club connectivity (rs 0.33, ps 0.064).CONCLUSIONS: Results provide novel evidence that alcohol use is associated with decreased rich-club connectivity and structural network disorganization. Given that both are critical in global brain communication, these results highlight the importance of examining alcohol use and brain relationships in emerging adulthood.

People with schizophrenia exhibit wide-ranging cognitive deficits, including slower processing speed and decreased cognitive control. Disorganized speech symptoms, such as communication impairment, have been associated with poor cognitive control task performance (e.g., goal maintenance and working memory). Whether communication impairment is associated with poorer performance on a broader range of non-cognitive control measures is unclear. In the current study, people with schizophrenia (n =51) and non-psychiatric controls (n =26) completed speech interviews allowing for reliable quantitative assessment of communication impairment. Participants also completed multiple goal maintenance and working memory tasks. In addition, we also examined (a) simple measures of processing speed involving highly automatic prepotent responses and (b) a non-cognitive control measure of general task performance. Schizophrenia communication impairment was significantly associated with poor performance in all cognitive domains, with the largest association found with processing speed (rs =-0.52). Further, communication impairment was also associated with the non-cognitive control measure of poor general task performance (rs =-0.43). In contrast, alogia, a negative speech symptom, and positive symptoms were less if at all related to cognitive task performance. Overall, this study suggests that communication impairment in schizophrenia may be associated with relatively generalized poor cognitive task performance.