Increased nucleus accumbens volume in college binge drinkers-preliminary evidence from manually segmented MRI analysis

IntroductionBinge drinking (BD) is characterized by high alcohol intake in a short time followed by periods of withdrawal. This pattern is very common during adolescence and early adulthood, a developmental stage marked by the maturation of the fronto-striatal networks. The basal ganglia, specifically the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the caudate nucleus (CN), are part of the fronto-striatal limbic circuit involved in reward processes underlying addictive behaviors. Abnormal NAcc and CN morphometry has been noted in alcoholics and other drug abusers, however the effects of BD on these subcortical regions have been poorly explored. Accordingly, the main goal of the present study was to address potential morphological alterations in the NAcc and CN in a sample of college binge drinkers (BDs).MethodManual segmentation of the NAcc and the CN was performed in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of 20 college BDs and 16 age-matched alcohol abstainers (18-23 years-old).ResultsA two-way mixed ANOVA revealed no group differences in the volumetry of the CN, whereas increased NAcc volume was observed in the BD group when compared to their abstinent control peers.DiscussionThese findings are in line with previous automatically segmented MRI reports highlighting abnormalities in a key region involved in drug rewarding processes in BDs.This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (UID/PSI/01662/2019), through the national funds (PIDDAC). This study was also supported by the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028672, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). SS was supported by the SFRH/BD/88628/2012, Doctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, co-financed by POPH/FSE through QREN. EL-C and AC were supported by the FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, through the national funds, within the scope of the Transitory Disposition of the Decrete No. 57/2016, of 29th of August, amended by Law No. 57/2017 of 19 July

Effects of a persistent binge drinking pattern of alcohol consumption in young people: a follow-up study using event-related potentials

Aims: The objective of this study was to examine brain activity related to visual attention processes in youths who had maintained a binge drinking (BD) pattern of alcohol consumption for > 2 years. Methods: The participants were 57 university students (26 binge drinkers: BDs) with no personal or family history of alcoholism or psychopathological disorders in first-degree relatives. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a visual oddball task (twice within a 2-year interval). The latency and amplitude of the P3b component of the ERPs were analysed. Results: The P3b amplitude was larger in young BDs than in aged-matched controls at both evaluation times, and the difference was more pronounced after 2 years of maintenance of a BD pattern of consumption. The larger P3b amplitude was associated with an earlier onset of regular drinking and with a greater quantity and intensity of consumption. Conclusions: These findings suggest that young BDs exhibit anomalies in neural activity involved in attentional/working memory processes, which increase after 2 years of maintenance of BD. This anomalous neural activity may reflect underlying dysfunctions in neurophysiological mechanisms as well as the recruitment of additional attentional/working memory resources to enable the binge drinkers to perform the task adequately.The study was supported by a grant from the Galician Regional R&D Autorithy, Xunta de Galicia, (INCITE08PXIB211015PR) and two grants from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (EDU2008-03400; PSI2011-22575). Eduardo Lopez-Caneda was supported by the FPU program (AP2008-03433) of the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion; S.D. was supported by a postdoctoral contract from the Isidro Parga Pondal program (Xunta de Galicia, Spain), and A.F.G. was supported by the FPI program (CG2008-0461-C02-01) of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion

Gray matter abnormalities in the inhibitory circuitry of young binge drinkers: a voxel-based morphometry study

Binge drinking (BD) is defined as a pattern of high alcohol intake in a short time followed by periods of abstinence. This behavior is very common in adolescence, a developmental stage characterized by the maturation of the prefrontal and striatal networks, important circuits underlying the capacity to control and regulate the behavior. In this study, we conducted a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis, using a region of interest (ROI) analysis of brain regions associated with inhibitory control and self-regulatory processes, in a group of 36 young college students, 20 binge drinkers (BDs) and 16 alcohol abstinent controls (AAC). Results showed increased gray matter (GM) densities in the left middle frontal gyrus in BDs, when compared with alcohol abstinent controls. Additionally, a ROI-based Pearson analysis documented positive correlations between the left middle frontal gyrus GM densities and the self-control subscale of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS), in the BD group. These findings highlight abnormalities in core brain regions associated with self-regulatory processes in the BD group.This work was conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). SS was supported by the SFRH/BD/88628/2012, Doctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, co-financed by POPH/FSE through QREN. AC was supported by the SFRH/BPD/91440/2012, Post-Doctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Predicting risk for Alcohol Use Disorder using longitudinal data with multimodal biomarkers and family history: a machine learning study.

Predictive models have succeeded in distinguishing between individuals with Alcohol use Disorder (AUD) and controls. However, predictive models identifying who is prone to develop AUD and the biomarkers indicating a predisposition to AUD are still unclear. Our sample (n = 656) included offspring and non-offspring of European American (EA) and African American (AA) ancestry from the Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) who were recruited as early as age 12 and were unaffected at first assessment and reassessed years later as AUD (DSM-5) (n = 328) or unaffected (n = 328). Machine learning analysis was performed for 220 EEG measures, 149 alcohol-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from a recent large Genome-wide Association Study (GWAS) of alcohol use/misuse and two family history (mother DSM-5 AUD and father DSM-5 AUD) features using supervised, Linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to test which features assessed before developing AUD predict those who go on to develop AUD. Age, gender, and ancestry stratified analyses were performed. Results indicate significant and higher accuracy rates for the AA compared with the EA prediction models and a higher model accuracy trend among females compared with males for both ancestries. Combined EEG and SNP features model outperformed models based on only EEG features or only SNP features for both EA and AA samples. This multidimensional superiority was confirmed in a follow-up analysis in the AA age groups (12-15, 16-19, 20-30) and EA age group (16-19). In both ancestry samples, the youngest age group achieved higher accuracy score than the two other older age groups. Maternal AUD increased the model's accuracy in both ancestries' samples. Several discriminative EEG measures and SNPs features were identified, including lower posterior gamma, higher slow wave connectivity (delta, theta, alpha), higher frontal gamma ratio, higher beta correlation in the parietal area, and 5 SNPs: rs4780836, rs2605140, rs11690265, rs692854, and rs13380649. Results highlight the significance of sampling uniformity followed by stratified (e.g., ancestry, gender, developmental period) analysis, and wider selection of features, to generate better prediction scores allowing a more accurate estimation of AUD development

Aprendizaje personalizado para facilitar la inserción en el mercado laboral, mediante la gamificación, a través del uso integrado de mundos y sistemas virtuales de respuesta en el aula para dispositivos móviles con acceso a internet

Integración de una aplicación informática propia como sistema de respuesta (clicker) y una aplicación de entorno simulado para facilitar la evaluación continúa de forma personalizada, aumentar la motivación y rendimiento a bajo coste

Trends in alcohol use among young people according to the pattern of consumption on starting university: A 9-year follow-up study

All relevant data are included within the paper. The study was approved by the Bioethics Committee of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Participants were informed verbally and in written format, that (I) participation was voluntary and students could opt out at any time without any consequence, (II) confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed, (III) and the data would be guarded carefully by our research team for the only purpose of this scientific study. Data contain potentially identifying information and sensitive participants information. For all these reasons and following the indications of the Bioethics Committee of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela the authors must not uploaded the dataset to a stable, public repository. However, the authors agree to make freely available any materials and data described in the publication upon reasonable request to [email protected]. principal investigator of this proyect and proffesor of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.AimTo identify differences in Risky Consumption (RC) and Binge drinking (BD) trends in students who already followed these patterns of alcohol consumption on starting university and those who did not, and also to try to understand what leads students to engage in these types of behaviour at university.Material and methodsCohort study among university students in Spain (n = 1382). BD and RC were measured with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test at ages 18, 20, 22, 24 and 27 years. Multi-level logistic regression for repeated measures was used to calculate the adjusted Odds Ratios (ORs).ResultsThe prevalence rates of RC and BD were lower throughout the study in students who did not follow these patterns of consumption at age 18. For RC and BD, the differences at age 27 years, expressed as percentage points (pp), were respectively 24 pp and 15 pp in women and 29 pp and 25 pp in men. Early age of onset of alcohol use increased the risk of engaging in RC and BD patterns at university, for men (OR = 2.91 & 2.80) and women (OR = 8.14 & 5.53). The same was observed in students living away from the parental home for BD (OR = 3.43 for men & 1.77 for women). Only women were influenced by having positive expectancies for engaging in RC (OR = 1.82) and BD (OR = 1.96).ConclusionsThe prevalence rates of both RC and BD at age 27 years were much higher among university students who already followed these patterns of consumption at age 18 years, with the differences being proportionally higher among women. Focusing on the age of onset of alcohol consumption and hindering access to alcohol by minors should be priority objectives aimed at preventing students from engaging in these patterns of alcohol consumption at university.This work was supported by grants awarded by the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas (Spain) (2005/PN014) and the Fondo de Investigacion Sanitaria (Spain) (PI15/00165). Carina Carbia was supported by the FPU program (FPU13/04569) of the Spanish Ministry of Education. Eduardo Lopez-Caneda was supported by the SFRH/BPD/109750/2015 Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology

On the syllable structure effect in european portuguese: evidence from ERPs

Syllable effects during visual word recognition have been observed for CV but not for CVC syllables, a puzzling effect that is not explained either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables, syllable complexity, or syllabic neighbourhood density. Furthermore, in European Portuguese (EP), syllable effects have not been found for pseudowords, suggesting that syllable activation might not precede lexical activation. Here, we combined a colour-congruency lexical decision task with the collection of electroencephalographic (EEG) data to investigate syllable effects in EP for CV and CVC words and pseudowords, with the latter presenting a match (CVCO+P+) or a mismatch (CVCO+P-) between their orthographic (O) and phonological (P) syllable structure to further ascertain the locus (i.e., orthographic and/or phonological) of syllable effects. Results showed syllable congruency effects in the N100, P200, and N400 ERP components for CV and CVC words suggesting the influence of different factors underlying the syllable structure effect

Functional and structural connectivity of the executive control network in college binge drinkers

Binge Drinking (BD) is a pattern of excessive alcohol consumption highly prevalent among college students, and has been associated with structural and functional alterations of brain networks. Recent advances in the resting-state connectivity analysis have boosted the research of the network-level connectivity disturbances associated with many psychiatric and neurological disorders, including addiction. Accordingly, atypical functional connectivity patterns in resting-state networks such as the Executive Control Network (ECN) have been found in substance users and alcohol-dependent individuals. In this study, we assessed for the first time the ECN functional and structural connectivity in a group of 34 college students, 20 (10 women) binge drinkers (BDs) in comparison with a group of 14 (8 women) alcohol abstinent controls (AACs).Overall, our findings documented increased resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the BDs left middle frontal cortex of the left ECN in comparison to the AACs, while no structural connectivity differences were observed between groups. Pearson correlations revealed a positive association between the left middle frontal gyrus rsFC and the frequency of BD episodes per month, in the BD group.These findings suggest that maintaining a pattern of acute and intermittent alcohol consumption during important stages of brain development, as the transition from adolescence to adulthood, is associated with impaired ECN rsFC despite no group differences being yet noticed in the ECN structural connectivity.This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (UID/PSI/01662/2019), through the national funds (PIDDAC); and was partially supported by the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028672, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). SSS was supported by the SFRH/BD/88628/2012, Doctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, co-financed by POPH/FSE through QREN. Eduardo Lopez-Caneda and Alberto Crego were supported by the FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, through the national funds, within the scope of the Transitory Disposition of the Decrete No. 57/2016, of 29th of August, amended by Law No. 57/2017 of 19 July

Characteristics of male initial sample and follow-up samples.

<p>Characteristics of male initial sample and follow-up samples.</p