Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, United States.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2013 Aug 1;131(3):230-7. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.05.015. Epub 2013 Jun 13.
Recent longitudinal studies demonstrate that addiction risk may be influenced by a cognitive, affective and behavioral phenotype that emerges during childhood. Relatively little research has focused on the affective or emotional risk components of this high-risk phenotype, including the relevant neurobiology.
Non-substance abusing youth (N=19; mean age=12.2) with externalizing psychopathology and paternal history of a substance use disorder and demographically matched healthy comparisons (N=18; mean age=11.9) were tested on a facial emotion matching task during functional MRI. This task involved matching faces by emotions (angry, anxious) or matching shape orientation.
High-risk youth exhibited increased medial prefrontal, precuneus and occipital cortex activation compared to the healthy comparison group during the face matching condition, relative to the control shape condition. The occipital activation correlated positively with parent-rated emotion regulation impairments in the high-risk group.
These findings suggest a preexisting abnormality in cortical activation in response to facial emotion matching in youth at high risk for the development of problem drug or alcohol use. These cortical deficits may underlie impaired affective processing and regulation, which in turn may contribute to escalating drug use in adolescence.
最近的纵向研究表明，成瘾风险可能受到认知、情感和行为表型的影响，这些表型在儿童时期出现。相对较少的研究关注这种高风险表型的情感或情绪风险成分，包括相关的神经生物学。
在功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 期间，对患有外化性精神病理学且父亲有物质使用障碍史的非药物滥用青年（N=19；平均年龄 12.2 岁）和在人口统计学上匹配的健康对照组（N=18；平均年龄 11.9 岁）进行面部情绪匹配任务测试。该任务涉及通过情绪（愤怒、焦虑）或形状方向匹配来匹配面部。
与健康对照组相比，高风险组在面孔匹配条件下比控制形状条件下表现出内侧前额叶、楔前叶和枕叶皮层的激活增加。在高风险组中，枕叶的激活与父母评定的情绪调节障碍呈正相关。
这些发现表明，在面临情绪面孔匹配时，高风险发展为问题药物或酒精使用的青年的大脑皮层激活存在预先存在的异常。这些皮质缺陷可能是情感处理和调节受损的基础，而情感处理和调节受损反过来又可能导致青少年药物使用的增加。
