Prefrontal Cortex Volumes in Adolescents With Alcohol Use Disorders: Unique Gender Effects

Abstract

Background: Adolescents with alcohol use disorders (AUD) have shown smaller prefrontal cortex (PFC) volumes compared with healthy controls; however, differences may have been due to comorbid disorders. This study examined PFC volumes in male and female adolescents with AUD who did not meet criteria for comorbid mood or attention disorders.Methods: Participants were adolescents aged 15 to 17 who met criteria for AUD (n = 14), and demographically similar healthy controls (n = 17). Exclusions included any history of a psychiatric or neurologic disorder other than AUD or conduct disorder. Magnetic resonance imaging scans occurred after at least 5 days of abstinence from alcohol or drugs. Overall PFC volumes and white matter PFC volumes were compared between groups.Results: After controlling for conduct disorder, gender, and intracranial volume, AUD teens demonstrated marginally smaller anterior ventral PFC volumes (p = 0.09) than controls, and significant interactions between group and gender were observed (p < 0.001 to p < 0.03). Compared with same-gender controls, females with AUD demonstrated smaller PFC volumes, while males with AUD had larger PFC volumes. The same pattern was observed for PFC white matter volumes.Conclusions: Consistent with adult literature, alcohol use during adolescence is associated with prefrontal volume abnormalities, including white matter differences. However, adolescents with AUD demonstrated gender-specific morphometric patterns. Thus, it is possible that gender may moderate the impact of adolescent alcohol use on prefrontal neurodevelopment, and the neurodevelopmental trajectories of heavy drinking boys and girls should be evaluated separately in longitudinal studies.

Neural Correlates of Response Inhibition and Cigarette Smoking in Late Adolescence

“…Structural studies suggest that volumetric abnormalities in the brains of adolescent substance users arise from the neurotoxic effects. For instance, in one study, alcohol users had smaller hippocampal volumes than matched control subjects, even though the groups did not differ with respect to family history of substance use disorders, parental SES, IQ, and other preexisting differences that could presumably affect brain morphology (Medina et al, 2008). Functional studies on adolescents who abuse illegal drugs, (Jacobsen et al, 2007(Jacobsen et al, , 2009Tapert et al, 2007) provided some results similar to those reported here.…”

“…These results suggest that either smoking behavior influences PFC function, or that individuals who have low inhibition-related neural activity a priori show more severe smoking behavior. Although previous studies have shown gender differences in adolescent substance users (Medina et al, 2008;Squeglia et al, 2009), none were observed in this sample.…”

Learning and Memory Performances in Adolescent Users of Alcohol and Marijuana: Interactive Effects

“…For example, in a group of polysubstance-using youth, longitudinal assessments of neuropsychological ability found more decrements associated with alcohol use than marijuana use, particularly in the domain of attention (Tapert et al, 2002). In a neuroimaging study with another sample of youth, exclusive alcohol users demonstrated volume reductions in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, which were less prominent if at all noted in the brains of combined alcohol and marijuana users (Medina et al, 2007b(Medina et al, , 2008. From yet another sample of adolescents, alcohol-only users exhibited greater white-matter tract abnormalities than users of both alcohol and marijuana (Jacobus et al, 2009b;.…”

Alcohol y cerebro adolescente

“…Los procesos neuromadurativos en esta región se extienden hasta la tercera década de la vida y tiene importantes repercusiones en funciones cognitivas relevantes como planificación, toma de decisiones, control comportamental, memoria de trabajo o procesos de atención, entre otros 26 . El abuso de alcohol en la adolescencia también ha sido asociado a menor volumen en cortex prefrontal, sin embargo esas diferencias podrían estar moduladas por el sexo, relacionadas con factores premórbidos o condicionadas genéticamente 27 . En cuanto a otra de las posibles dianas, el hipocampo, se trata de una estructura con enorme plasticidad que está implicada en la formación de nuevas memorias y en el mantenimiento de representaciones del entorno espacial.…”