Cognitive, emotion control, and motor performance of adolescents in the NCANDA study: Contributions from alcohol consumption, age, sex, ethnicity, and family history of addiction.

Abstract

Objective To investigate development of cognitive and motor functions in healthy adolescents and to explore whether hazardous drinking affects the normal developmental course of those functions. Method Participants were 831 adolescents recruited across five United States sites of the National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA): 692 met criteria for no/low alcohol exposure, and 139 exceeded drinking thresholds. Cross-sectional, baseline data were collected with computerized and traditional neuropsychological tests assessing eight functional domains expressed as composite scores. General additive modeling evaluated factors potentially modulating performance (age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and pubertal developmental stage). Results Older no/low-drinking participants achieved better scores than younger ones on five Accuracy composites (General Ability, Abstraction, Attention, Emotion, and Balance). Speeded responses for Attention, Motor Speed, and General Ability were sensitive to age and pubertal development. The exceeds-threshold group (accounting for age, sex, and other demographic factors) performed significantly below the no/low-drinking group on Balance accuracy and on General Ability, Attention, Episodic Memory, Emotion, and Motor speed scores and showed evidence for faster speed at the expense of accuracy. Delay Discounting performance was consistent with poor impulse control in the younger no/low drinkers and in exceeds-threshold drinkers regardless of age. Conclusions Higher achievement with older age and pubertal stage in General Ability, Abstraction, Attention, Emotion, and Balance suggests continued functional development through adolescence, possibly supported by concurrently maturing frontal, limbic, and cerebellar brain systems. Whether low scores by the exceeds-threshold group resulted from drinking or from other pre-existing factors requires longitudinal study.

Effects of prior testing lasting a full year in NCANDA adolescents: Contributions from age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, site, family history of alcohol or drug abuse, and baseline performance

“…Descriptions of the 15 WebCNP tests used were provided in our earlier report (Sullivan et al, 2016) (Table 3), with most tests having both accuracy and speed (response time) measures. The descriptions were modified from the WebCNP support manual.…”

Structural brain anomalies in healthy adolescents in the NCANDA cohort: relation to neuropsychological test performance, sex, and ethnicity

“…Scores were also adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, and site. Full descriptions of the tests appear elsewhere (Sullivan et al 2016). …”

“…The current report provides an extensive analysis of the clinical findings by comparing cognitive and motor performance of adolescents with brain structural anomalies against performance by their counterparts without anomalies using test data from our earlier publication (Sullivan et al 2016); examining the distribution of demographic descriptors (age, sex, ethnicity, and body mass index [BMI]) associated with each anomaly; and quantifying the infratentorial volume in all participants with the goal of using a quantitative approach to identify and measure mega cisterna magna, which occurred in one quarter of the sample with brain structural anomalies. These analyses addressed two critical questions: 1) Are incidental finding of little to no consequence cognitively or motorically, or alternatively, do these clinical readings have functional correlates with quantitative neuropsychological testing?…”

Harmonizing DTI measurements across scanners to examine the development of white matter microstructure in 803 adolescents of the NCANDA study

“…The sample of 803 adolescents comprises two groups with useable DTI data: 671 adolescents who fell within established criteria for no to low alcohol and drug consumption history, and 132 recruits who exceeded alcohol or drug consumption history at baseline. An extensive description of the total NCANDA sample (Brown et al, 2015), structural MRI baseline findings (Pfefferbaum et al, 2015b), and neuropsychological results (Sullivan et al, 2016) appear elsewhere.…”