Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06519, USA.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2012 May;36(5):768-79. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2011.01672.x. Epub 2012 Feb 16.
Alcohol abuse and dependence are common problems in the United States that stem from a variety of factors, one of which may be a period of high level social drinking during college and early adulthood. Extant study implicates risk taking as a cognitive factor that contributes to habitual and heavy drinking. We sought to examine the neural processes of risk taking in young, nondependent drinkers.
We compared 20 young adult social drinkers with a high level of alcohol use (AH), as defined by number of drinks per month, and 21 demographically matched drinkers with low to moderate alcohol use (ALM) in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the stop signal task. By contrasting risk taking (speeded) to risk aversion (slowed) trials, we examined the neural correlates of risk taking. Brain imaging data were analyzed with Statistical Parametric Mapping. Regions of interest were identified and corresponding effect sizes were examined for correlations with self-reported alcohol use.
The results showed that, compared with ALM, AH demonstrated decreased activation in right superior frontal gyrus and left caudate nucleus when contrasting risk taking and risk aversion trials at p < 0.001, uncorrected. Furthermore, examination of the effect size data showed that the extent of these decreased regional activations correlated with frequency of drinking in women, but not men.
These findings suggest a neural analog of nondependent, high level drinking. Specifically, high level social drinking is associated with altered activation of the caudate and superior frontal cortex, an association that appears to be stronger in women than in men and is strongly tied to the frequency of drinking. These results are relevant in understanding risk taking behavior in social drinking as well as in examining the potential path from high level social use in young adults to dangerous alcohol consumption later in life.
酗酒和依赖在美国是常见问题，其成因多种多样，其中之一可能是在大学和刚成年早期的一段时期内大量社交性饮酒。现有研究表明，冒险行为是导致习惯性和大量饮酒的认知因素之一。我们试图研究年轻、非依赖饮酒者的冒险行为的神经过程。
我们在停止信号任务的功能性磁共振成像研究中，比较了 20 名年轻的社交性饮酒者（AH）和 21 名酒精摄入量低至中等的（ALM）年龄匹配的饮酒者。通过对比冒险（加速）和风险规避（减速）试验，我们研究了冒险行为的神经相关因素。使用统计参数映射分析脑成像数据。确定了感兴趣的区域，并检查了与自我报告的饮酒量相关的对应效应量。
结果表明，与 ALM 相比，当对比风险和风险规避试验时，AH 表现出右侧额上回和左侧尾状核的激活减少，未校正的 p<0.001。此外，对效应量数据的检查表明，这些区域激活减少的程度与女性饮酒频率相关，但与男性无关。
这些发现表明了非依赖、高水平饮酒的神经模拟。具体而言，高水平社交性饮酒与尾状核和额上回的激活改变有关，这种关联在女性中比男性更强，与饮酒频率密切相关。这些结果对于理解社交性饮酒中的冒险行为以及研究年轻人中高水平社交饮酒向以后生活中危险饮酒的潜在途径具有重要意义。
