6.45 Trajectories of Alcohol Use Initiation during Adolescence: The Role of Stress, Amygdala Reactivity, and Risk for Developing an Alcohol Use Disorder

The brain in social context: A systematic review of substance use and social processing from adolescence to young adulthood

“…Several studies have used a modified version of a faces-matching task ( Hariri et al, 2002 ), which involves passive viewing of emotional faces to measure whether fear or anger elicits heightened response via the amygdala. Elsayed et al (2018) found that adolescents who were later classified as early initiators ( n = 21) demonstrated higher neural activity to fearful facial expressions, when contrasted with a group classified as late initiators ( n = 231). In other words, the early versus late group had higher amygdala activity to implicit environmental signals of threat.…”

“…This pattern emerged for negative emotion only, and not positive emotion. Elsayed et al (2018) N = 330 ( n = 32 early initiators) M age = 13.37 (1.08) 56 % White, 44 % Other Race 44 % Girls (early initiators) 50 % Girls (late initiators) Self-report via Substance Use Questionnaire (SUQ) and Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (AEQ) Effects of neural function on substance use initiation Polydrug Face-Matching Task (Angry and Fearful Faces), Card-Guessing Task (Monetary Reward) Angry and Fearful Faces > Neutral Shapes Monetary Reward > Baseline Amygdala, VS Adolescents who were classified as early initiators showed greater amygdala activation to fearful faces, compared to those classified as late initiators. Activity in the VS to monetary reward did not differ between groups.…”