Brain anatomical covariation patterns linked to binge drinking and age at first full drink

Abstract

Highlights We identified a reproducible cortical and subcortical brain structural covariation pattern. A novel pattern discovery method Joint and Individual Variance Explained (JIVE) was used. The cortical and subcortical structural covariation pattern is related to alcohol use initiation. The identified pattern is dominated by covariation among brainstem, thalamus and PFC. A thalamic-PFC-brainstem circuitry might be related to alcohol use initiation.

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“…Of note, the joint component is highly reproducible and developmentally stable. The joint component structure was almost identical (with Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.985) to the one identified in a recent Human Connectome Project study ( Zhao et al., 2021 ) involving young adults (age range: 22–36 years) that associated the joint component with early initiation of alcohol use ( Fig. 2 ).…”

“…For example, age-related changes in structural covariation patterns were observed in regions within the default-mode network and other networks associated with language-related tasks and executive control ( Mechelli et al., 2005 ; Li et al., 2013 ). Our analyses showed the structural covariation among regions in the thalamus-PFC-brainstem circuit was remarkably consistent across different developmental stages and in females and males ( Zhao et al., 2021 ). Similarly, relatively modest gender-related differences were observed relative to the relationships between the identified structural covariation pattern and the explored behavioral measures.…”

“…Images were parcellated into 34 regions per hemisphere according to the Desikan-Killiany atlas (Desikan et al, 2006). In this study and as previously (Zhao et al, 2021), we were interested in covariation patterns among four morphological features in cortical and subcortical regions. Specifically, these included surface area, thickness, and GM volume of 68 cortical regions and GM volume of 17 subcortical regions (including bilateral hippocampus, amygdala, caudate, putamen, pallidum, nucleus accumbens, ventral diencephalon, thalamus proper, and brainstem).…”

“…In this study, we were interested in identifying shared subcortical and cortical covariation patterns across multiple morphological measures. Our prior studies (Zhao et al, 2019(Zhao et al, , 2021 have shown that JIVE has the potential to provide insights at a brain network level into coordinated brain structural relationships.…”

“…Indeed, our prior study revealed that brain structural covariation is related to age in children and adolescents (Zhao, Klein, Castellanos, & Milham, 2019). More recently, co-development of brain regions in a thalamus-prefrontal cortex (PFC)-brainstem circuit was linked to age at first full drink prior to 21 years in young adults (Zhao, Constable, Hien, Chung, & Potenza, 2021), consistent with findings indicating an important role of PFC-brainstem circuitry in compulsive alcohol consumption in rodents (Siciliano et al, 2019). Specifically, the ability of activity within the PFC-brainstem circuitry to bidirectionally modulate alcohol intake in mice could be both constitute an important biomarker relating to the initiation of alcohol consumption as well as a driving factor underlying compulsive drinking (Siciliano et al, 2019).…”