Abstract
Prior work suggests that there may be two distinct pathways of alcohol use disorder (AUD) risk: one associated with positive emotion enhancement and behavioral impulsivity, and another associated with negative emotion relief and coping. We sought to map these two pathways onto individual differences in neural reward and threat processing assessed using blood-oxygen-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging in a sample of 759 undergraduate students (426 women, mean age 19.65±1.24 years) participating in the Duke Neurogenetics Study. We demonstrate that problem drinking is highest in the context of stress and in those with one of two distinct neural phenotypes: (1) a combination of relatively low reward-related activity of the ventral striatum (VS) and high threat-related reactivity of the amygdala; or (2) a combination of relatively high VS activity and low amygdala reactivity. In addition, we demonstrate that the relationship between stress and problem alcohol use is mediated by impulsivity, as reflected in monetary delay discounting rates, for those with high VS–low amygdala reactivity, and by anxious/depressive symptomatology for those with the opposite neural risk phenotype. Across both neural phenotypes, we found that greater divergence between VS and amygdala reactivity predicted greater risk for problem drinking. Finally, for those individuals with the low VS–high amygdala risk phenotype we found that stress not only predicted the presence of AUD diagnosis at the time of neuroimaging but also subsequent problem drinking reported 3 months following study completion. These results offer new insight into the neural basis of AUD risk and suggest novel biological targets for early individualized treatment or prevention.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Bartholomew Brigidi, Kelly Faig, Adam Gorka, Adrienne Romer and Matthew Scult for their assistance in DNS data collection and analysis. The DNS is supported by Duke University and NIDA grant DA033369. YSN received support through a predoctoral Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Student Research fellowship. ARH receives support through NIDA grants DA033369 and DA031579.
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Nikolova, Y., Knodt, A., Radtke, S. et al. Divergent responses of the amygdala and ventral striatum predict stress-related problem drinking in young adults: possible differential markers of affective and impulsive pathways of risk for alcohol use disorder. Mol Psychiatry 21, 348–356 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2015.85
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2015.85
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