Brain responses and approach bias to social alcohol cues and their association with drinking in a social setting in young adult males

Alcohol is mainly consumed in social settings, in which people often adapt their drinking behaviour to that of others, also called imitation of drinking. Yet, it remains unclear what drives this drinking in a social setting. In this study, we expected to see stronger brain and behavioural responses to social compared to non-social alcohol cues, and these responses to be associated with drinking in a social setting. The sample consisted of 153 beer-drinking males, aged 18–25 years. Brain responses to social alcohol cues were measured during an alcohol cue-exposure task performed in an fMRI scanner. Behavioural responses to social alcohol cues were measured using a stimulus-response compatibility task, providing an index of approach bias towards these cues. Drinking in a social setting was measured in a laboratory mimicking a bar environment. Specific brain responses to social alcohol cues were observed in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus and the left inferior parietal lobe. There was no approach bias towards social alcohol cues specifically; however, we did find an approach bias towards alcohol (versus soda) cues in general. Brain responses and approach bias towards social alcohol cues were unrelated and not associated with actual drinking. Thus, we found no support for a relation between drinking in a social setting on the one hand, and brain cue-reactivity or behavioural approach biases to social alcohol cues on the other hand. This suggests that, in contrast to our hypothesis, drinking in a social setting may not be driven by brain or behavioural responses to social alcohol cues

Correction: Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study:An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260952.]

Brain responses and approach bias to social alcohol cues and their association with drinking in a social setting in young adult males

Alcohol is mainly consumed in social settings, in which people often adapt their drinking behaviour to that of others, also called imitation of drinking. Yet, it remains unclear what drives this drinking in a social setting. In this study, we expected to see stronger brain and behavioural responses to social compared to non-social alcohol cues, and these responses to be associated with drinking in a social setting. The sample consisted of 153 beer-drinking males, aged 18-25 years. Brain responses to social alcohol cues were measured during an alcohol cue-exposure task performed in an fMRI scanner. Behavioural responses to social alcohol cues were measured using a stimulus-response compatibility task, providing an index of approach bias towards these cues. Drinking in a social setting was measured in a laboratory mimicking a bar environment. Specific brain responses to social alcohol cues were observed in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus and the left inferior parietal lobe. There was no approach bias towards social alcohol cues specifically; however, we did find an approach bias towards alcohol (versus soda) cues in general. Brain responses and approach bias towards social alcohol cues were unrelated and not associated with actual drinking. Thus, we found no support for a relation between drinking in a social setting on the one hand, and brain cue-reactivity or behavioural approach biases to social alcohol cues on the other hand. This suggests that, in contrast to our hypothesis, drinking in a social setting may not be driven by brain or behavioural responses to social alcohol cues

Brain responses and approach bias to social alcohol cues and their association with drinking in a social setting in young adult males

Alcohol is mainly consumed in social settings, in which people often adapt their drinking behaviour to that of others, also called imitation of drinking. Yet, it remains unclear what drives this drinking in a social setting. In this study, we expected to see stronger brain and behavioural responses to social compared to non-social alcohol cues, and these responses to be associated with drinking in a social setting. The sample consisted of 153 beer-drinking males, aged 18-25 years. Brain responses to social alcohol cues were measured during an alcohol cue-exposure task performed in an fMRI scanner. Behavioural responses to social alcohol cues were measured using a stimulus-response compatibility task, providing an index of approach bias towards these cues. Drinking in a social setting was measured in a laboratory mimicking a bar environment. Specific brain responses to social alcohol cues were observed in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus and the left inferior parietal lobe. There was no approach bias towards social alcohol cues specifically; however, we did find an approach bias towards alcohol (versus soda) cues in general. Brain responses and approach bias towards social alcohol cues were unrelated and not associated with actual drinking. Thus, we found no support for a relation between drinking in a social setting on the one hand, and brain cue-reactivity or behavioural approach biases to social alcohol cues on the other hand. This suggests that, in contrast to our hypothesis, drinking in a social setting may not be driven by brain or behavioural responses to social alcohol cues

Relation Between Structural and Functional Connectivity in Major Depressive Disorder

<p>Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by abnormalities in both brain structure and function within a frontolimbic network. However, little is known about the relation between structural and functional abnormalities in MDD. Here, we used a multimodal neuroimaging approach to investigate the relation between structural connectivity and functional connectivity within the frontolimbic network.</p><p>Methods: Eighteen MDD and 24 healthy control subjects were included, of which the integrity of the uncinate fasciculus was assessed that connects the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the medial temporal lobe (MTL) with diffusion tensor imaging. Furthermore, we assessed the functional connectivity between these brain regions with functional magnetic resonance imaging.</p><p>Results: The results showed that white matter integrity of the uncinate fasciculus was reduced and that functional connectivity between the subgenual ACC and MTL was enhanced in MDD. Importantly, we identified a negative correlation between uncinate fasciculus integrity and subgenual ACC functional connectivity with the bilateral hippocampus in MDD but not in healthy control subjects. Moreover, this negative structure-function relation in MDD was positively associated with depression severity.</p><p>Conclusions: These findings suggest that structural abnormalities in MDD are associated with increased functional connectivity between subgenual ACC and MTL and that these changes are concomitant with severity of depressive symptoms. This association indicates that structural abnormalities in MDD contribute to increased functional connectivity within the frontolimbic network.</p>

Cortical profiles of numerous psychiatric disorders and normal development share a common pattern

The neurobiological bases of the association between development and psychopathology remain poorly understood. Here, we identify a shared spatial pattern of cortical thickness (CT) in normative development and several psychiatric and neurological disorders. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to CT of 68 regions in the Desikan-Killiany atlas derived from three large-scale datasets comprising a total of 41,075 neurotypical participants. PCA produced a spatially broad first principal component (PC1) that was reproducible across datasets. Then PC1 derived from healthy adult participants was compared to the pattern of CT differences associated with psychiatric and neurological disorders comprising a total of 14,886 cases and 20,962 controls from seven ENIGMA disease-related working groups, normative maturation and aging comprising a total of 17,697 scans from the ABCD Study® and the IMAGEN developmental study, and 17,075 participants from the ENIGMA Lifespan working group, as well as gene expression maps from the Allen Human Brain Atlas. Results revealed substantial spatial correspondences between PC1 and widespread lower CT observed in numerous psychiatric disorders. Moreover, the PC1 pattern was also correlated with the spatial pattern of normative maturation and aging. The transcriptional analysis identified a set of genes including KCNA2, KCNS1 and KCNS2 with expression patterns closely related to the spatial pattern of PC1. The gene category enrichment analysis indicated that the transcriptional correlations of PC1 were enriched to multiple gene ontology categories and were specifically over-represented starting at late childhood, coinciding with the onset of significant cortical maturation and emergence of psychopathology during the prepubertal-to-pubertal transition. Collectively, the present study reports a reproducible latent pattern of CT that captures interregional profiles of cortical changes in both normative brain maturation and a spectrum of psychiatric disorders. The pubertal timing of the expression of PC1-related genes implicates disrupted neurodevelopment in the pathogenesis of the spectrum of psychiatric diseases emerging during adolescence