Effect of alcohol use on the adolescent brain and behavior

Abstract

Adolescence is a particularly vulnerable neurodevelopmental period marked by high rates of engagement with risky alcohol use. This review summarizes the cognitive and neural consequences following alcohol use during adolescence from longitudinal design studies in humans and animals. Findings from human adolescent studies suggest that binge drinking and heavy alcohol use is associated with poorer cognitive functioning on a broad range of neuropsychological assessments, including learning, psychomotor speed, attention, executive functioning, and impulsivity. adolescence is memory, visuospatial functioning, Alcohol use during associated with accelerated decreases in gray matter and attenuated increases in white matter volume, and aberrant neural activity during executive functioning, attentional control, and reward sensitivity tasks, when compared to non-drinking adolescents. Animal studies in rodents and nonhuman primates have replicated human findings, and suggest cognitive and neural consequences of adolescent alcohol use may persist into adulthood. Novel rodent studies demonstrate that adolescent alcohol use may increase reward responsiveness of the dopamine system to alcohol later in life, as well as disrupt adolescent neurogenesis, potentially through neuroinflammation, with long-lasting neural and behavioral effects into adulthood. Larger longitudinal human cognitive and neuroimaging studies with more diverse samples are currently underway which will improve understanding of the impact of polysubstance use, as well as the interactive effects of substance use, physical and mental health, and demographic factors on cognition and neurodevelopment.

Adolescent alcohol binge-drinking induces delayed appearance of behavioral defects in mice

“…Over the past years, rodent models have been used to study alcohol's impact on adolescent brain and consequent behavioral impairments. Despite not fully recapitulating the complex human behavior defects, animal models provided findings partly consistent with human research (14, 18,23).…”

“…AAE is also believed to have deleterious effects on verbal learning and memory, and lead to long-lasting deficits on attentional and executive functions (14,16). Moreover, AAE significantly increases the risk of developing psychiatric and behavioral disorders later in life, including alcohol addiction (7,13,17,18), and studies have revealed a significant association between the age of drinking onset and the risk of developing alcohol dependence later in life (19,20). Altogether, it has become clear that, because of the high plasticity of the brain, adolescence is a very sensitive period for the development of alcoholrelated behavioral impairments.…”

Parental Family History of Alcohol Use Disorder and Neural Correlates of Response Inhibition in Children From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

“…These statistics are concerning because excessive alcohol use during adolescence is associated with a myriad of negative consequences including alcohol and substance use disorders (AUD, SUD; Dwyer‐Lindgren et al, 2018), and other mental health problems (Pompili et al, 2010; Teesson et al, 2010; Welsh et al, 2017). Alcohol use during adolescence has also been associated with alterations in brain structure and function, including aberrant activation patterns during response inhibition tasks (for review, see Lees et al, 2020; Lees et al, 2019; Squeglia and Cservenka, 2017; Squeglia and Gray, 2016), as well as poorer test performance across cognitive domains, with executive functions and memory being the most vulnerable (Gould, 2010; Lees et al, 2019). Recent longitudinal neuroimaging studies have begun investigating, and have shown, that underlying neural vulnerabilities of response inhibition in substance‐naïve children appear to contribute to earlier initiation and problematic progression of alcohol use during adolescence (Squeglia and Cservenka, 2017).…”

Brain Anatomical Covariation Patterns Linked to Binge Drinking and Age at First Full Drink Prior to 21 Years

“…Age at first full drink prior to 21 years (AFD<21) and subsequent binge drinking (BD) are two important factors linked to the development of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) (1,2).…”

“…Early onset of alcohol use may interfere with ongoing neurodevelopment, inducing neurobiological changes that could promote subsequent development of AUDs (1,2). Human neuroimaging studies indicate that early onset of alcohol use and BD in adolescents or emerging adults are linked to multiple brain structural changes (1,2), such as reduced cortical thickness (6), decreased surface area (7), and increased grey matter (GM) densities (8) in frontal regions, and a GM volume reduction in many regions (9)(10)(11) with exceptions including striatal volumetric increases (12). Sex-related effects have also been observed, with cortical thickness in selected frontal regions thinner in males and thicker in females (13) and putamenal volumes smaller in males and larger in females (14).…”