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Alcohol craving is an urge to consume alcohol that commonly precedes drinking; however, craving does not lead to drinking for all people under all circumstances. The current study measured the correlation between neural reactivity and alcohol cues as a risk, and purpose in daily life as a protective factor that may influence the link between alcohol craving and the subsequent amount of consumption.Observational study that correlated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on neural cue reactivity and ecological momentary assessments (EMA) on purpose in life and alcohol use.Two college campuses in the United States.A total of 54 college students (37 women, 16 men, and 1 other) recruited via campus-based groups from January 2019 to October 2020.Participants underwent fMRI while viewing images of alcohol; we examined activity within the ventral striatum, a key region of interest implicated in reward and craving. Participants then completed 28 days of EMA and answered questions about daily levels of purpose in life and alcohol use, including how much they craved and consumed alcohol.A significant three-way interaction indicated that greater alcohol cue reactivity within the ventral striatum was associated with heavier alcohol use following craving in daily life only when people were previously feeling a lower than usual sense of purpose. By contrast, individuals with heightened neural alcohol cue reactivity drank less in response to craving if they were feeling a stronger than their usual sense of purpose in the preceding moments (bNeural sensitivity to alcohol cues within the ventral striatum appears to be a potential risk for increased alcohol use in social drinkers, when people feel less purposeful. Enhancing daily levels of purpose in life may promote alcohol moderation among social drinkers who show relatively higher reactivity to alcohol cues.

Mindful attention is characterized by acknowledging the present experience as a transient mental event. Early stages of mindfulness practice may require greater neural effort for later efficiency. Early effort may self-regulate behavior and focalize the present, but this understanding lacks a computational explanation. Here we used network control theory as a model of how external control inputs—operationalizing effort—distribute changes in neural activity evoked during mindful attention across the white matter network. We hypothesized that individuals with greater network controllability, thereby efficiently distributing control inputs, effectively self-regulate behavior. We further hypothesized that brain regions that utilize greater control input exhibit shorter intrinsic timescales of neural activity. Shorter timescales characterize quickly discontinuing past processing to focalize the present. We tested these hypotheses in a randomized controlled study that primed participants to either mindfully respond or naturally react to alcohol cues during fMRI and administered text reminders and measurements of alcohol consumption during 4 wk postscan. We found that participants with greater network controllability moderated alcohol consumption. Mindful regulation of alcohol cues, compared to one’s own natural reactions, reduced craving, but craving did not differ from the baseline group. Mindful regulation of alcohol cues, compared to the natural reactions of the baseline group, involved more-effortful control of neural dynamics across cognitive control and attention subnetworks. This effort persisted in the natural reactions of the mindful group compared to the baseline group. More-effortful neural states had shorter timescales than less effortful states, offering an explanation for how mindful attention promotes being present.

Humans are a fundamentally social species whose well-being depends on how we connect with and relate to one another. As such, scientific understanding of factors that promote health and well-being requires insight into causal factors present at multiple levels of analysis, ranging from brain networks that dynamically reconfigure across situations to social networks that allow behaviors to spread from person to person. The Social Health Impacts of Network Effects (SHINE) study takes a multilevel approach to investigate how interactions between the mind, brain, and community give rise to well-being. The SHINE protocol assesses multiple health and psychological variables, with particular emphasis on alcohol use, how alcohol-related behavior can be modified via self-regulation, and how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors unfold in the context of social networks. An overarching aim is to derive generalizable principles about relationships that promote well-being by applying multilayer mathematical models and explanatory approaches such as network control theory. The SHINE study includes data from 711 college students recruited from social groups at two universities in the northeastern United States of America, prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed at least one of the following study components: baseline self-reported questionnaires and social network characterization, self-regulation intervention assignment (mindful attention or perspective taking), functional and structural neuroimaging, ecological momentary assessment, and longitudinal follow-ups including questionnaires and social network characterization. The SHINE dataset enables integration across modalities, levels of analysis, and timescales to understand young adults’ well-being and health-related decision making. Our goal is to further our understanding of how individuals can change their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and of how these changes unfold in the context of social networks.

Although the concept of “common sense” is often taken for granted, judging whether behavior or knowledge is common sense requires a complex series of mental processes. Additionally, different perceptions of common sense can lead to social conflicts. Thus, it is important to understand how we perceive common sense and make relevant judgments. The present study investigated the dynamics of neural representations underlying judgments of what common sense is. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants indicated the extent to which they thought that a given sentence corresponded to common sense under the given perspective. We incorporated two different decision contexts involving different cultural perspectives to account for social variability of the judgments, an important feature of common sense judgments apart from logical true/false judgments. Our findings demonstrated that common sense versus non-common sense perceptions involve the amygdala and a brain network for episodic memory recollection, including the hippocampus, angular gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, suggesting integrated affective, mnemonic, and social functioning in common sense processing. Furthermore, functional connectivity multivariate pattern analysis revealed that interactivity among the amygdala, angular gyrus, and parahippocampal cortex reflected representational features of common sense perception and not those of non-common sense perception. Our study demonstrated that the social memory network is exclusively involved in processing common sense and not non-common sense. These results suggest that intergroup exclusion and misunderstanding can be reduced by experiencing and encoding long-term social memories about behavioral norms and knowledge that act as common sense of the outgroup.