Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2018 Oct;3(10):868-877. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2018.04.008. Epub 2018 May 3.
Error-related brain activities are altered in individuals with substance use disorders. Here we examined error-related activities in relation to problem drinking in nondependent alcohol drinkers. In particular, we investigated sex differences and whether altered error responses are related to post-error behavioral control.
A sample of 145 nondependent drinkers (77 women) performed the stop-signal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Imaging data were processed and modeled using statistical parametric mapping. Independent sample t test and linear regression were employed to examine sex differences in error response and relationship between error response and problem drinking.
Compared with men, women showed greater error-related (stop error > go success) activations in the bilateral thalamus, right middle/superior temporal cortex, and bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. In whole-brain linear regression of error responses against the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score, a wide swath of cortical and subcortical regions, including the thalamus, showed decreased activation in association with problem drinking in women but not in men. However, men and women were not different in the extent of post-error slowing and decreased thalamic error response in association with problem drinking was not related to the extent of post-error slowing in women.
The results suggest sex differences in error-related activations with heavier drinking associated with reduced error activations in women but not in men. These differences in cerebral activations may reflect higher physiological arousal in response to errors and greater vulnerability of saliency-related arousal response to problem drinking in female as compared with male social drinkers.
物质使用障碍个体的错误相关脑活动发生改变。在此，我们研究了与非依赖饮酒者的酗酒问题相关的错误相关活动。具体而言，我们调查了性别差异，以及错误反应的改变是否与错误后行为控制有关。
145 名非依赖饮酒者（77 名女性）在功能磁共振成像期间执行停止信号任务。使用统计参数映射处理和建模成像数据。采用独立样本 t 检验和线性回归来检验错误反应中的性别差异以及错误反应与酗酒问题之间的关系。
与男性相比，女性在双侧丘脑、右侧中/上颞叶皮质和双侧背侧前扣带皮层中显示出更大的错误相关（停止错误>成功）激活。在错误反应与酒精使用障碍识别测试评分的全脑线性回归中，与酗酒问题相关的皮层和皮质下区域（包括丘脑）的广泛区域显示出激活减少。然而，男性和女性在错误后减速的程度上没有差异，与酗酒问题相关的丘脑错误反应减少与女性错误后减速的程度无关。
结果表明，女性饮酒量较多时，错误相关激活存在性别差异，与男性相比，女性的错误激活减少。这些大脑活动的差异可能反映了女性对错误的更高生理唤醒以及与突显相关的唤醒反应对女性社交饮酒者酗酒问题的更大脆弱性。
