Alcohol affects brain functional connectivity and its coupling with behavior: greater effects in male heavy drinkers

Abstract

Acute and chronic alcohol exposure significantly affect behavior but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are still poorly understood. Here we used functional connectivity density (FCD) mapping to study alcohol-related changes in resting brain activity and their association with behavior. Heavy drinkers (HD; N=16; 16 males) and normal controls (NM; N=24; 14 males) were tested after placebo and after acute alcohol administration. Group comparisons showed that NM had higher FCD in visual and prefrontal cortices, default-mode network regions, and thalamus, while HD had higher FCD in cerebellum. Acute alcohol significantly increased FCD within the thalamus, impaired cognitive and motor functions, and affected self-reports of mood/drug effects in both groups. Partial least squares regression showed alcohol-induced changes in mood/drug effects were associated with changes in thalamic FCD in both groups. Disruptions in motor function were associated with increases in cerebellar FCD in NM and thalamus FCD in HD. Alcohol-induced declines in cognitive performance were associated with connectivity increases in visual cortex and thalamus in NM, but in HD, increases in precuneus FCD were associated with improved cognitive performance. Acute alcohol reduced “neurocognitive coupling”, the association between behavioral performance and FCD (indexing brain activity), an effect that was accentuated in HD compared to NM. Findings suggest that reduced cortical connectivity in HD contribute to decline in cognitive abilities associated with heavy alcohol consumption, whereas increased cerebellar connectivity in HD may have compensatory effects on behavioral performance. The results reveal how drinking history alters the association between brain functional connectivity density and individual differences in behavioral performance.

Association of brain age with smoking, alcohol consumption, and genetic variants

“…Our analyses of alcohol intake frequency and RBA indicated that subjects who drank daily or almost daily had a significantly higher RBA compared to those who drank less frequently. Our finding was consistent with previous studies, which showed that heavy alcohol consumption was detrimental to the brain (Asensio et al, 2016;Pfefferbaum et al, 1992;Shokri-Kojori et al, 2017). On the other hand, subjects who drank at special occasions only had on average the lowest RBA of all groups of alcohol consumption frequencies.…”

Sex differences in the interacting roles of impulsivity and positive alcohol expectancy in problem drinking: A structural brain imaging study

“…Numerous imaging studies reported functional (George et al, 2001, Shokri-Kojori et al, 2016, Wrase et al, 2007) and structural (Kong et al, 2012, Pitel et al, 2015, Sullivan et al, 2003) thalamic changes in alcohol addicts. In our previous fMRI study of social drinkers, higher AUDIT score was correlated with impaired inhibition and diminished responses in the cerebellum, thalamus, frontal and parietal regions, independent of years of alcohol use (Hu et al, 2016).…”

Bariatric surgery in obese patients reduced resting connectivity of brain regions involved with self‐referential processing

“…FCD mapping was used to compute the strength of local (lFCD) and global FCD (gFCD) based on the growing algorithm as implemented in IDL (Harris Geospatial, Broomfield, CO) (Shokri-Kojori, Tomasi, Wiers, Wang, & Volkow, 2016;Tomasi & Volkow, 2010, 2011a. The growing algorithm for lFCD includes calculating Pearson correlation between voxel (i) and its immediate neighbors (with a surface connectivity criterion).…”