Frontal brain dysfunction in alcoholism with and without antisocial personality disorder

Alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) often are comorbid conditions. Alcoholics, as well as nonalcoholic individuals with ASPD, exhibit behaviors associated with prefrontal brain dysfunction such as increased impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. These behaviors can influence drinking motives and patterns of consumption. Because few studies have investigated the combined association between ASPD and alcoholism on neuropsychological functioning, this study examined the influence of ASPD symptoms and alcoholism on tests sensitive to frontal brain deficits. The participants were 345 men and women. Of them, 144 were abstinent alcoholics (66 with ASPD symptoms), and 201 were nonalcoholic control participants (24 with ASPD symptoms). Performances among the groups were examined with Trails A and B tests, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, the Ruff Figural Fluency Test, and Performance subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Measures of affect also were obtained. Multiple regression analyses showed that alcoholism, specific drinking variables (amount and duration of heavy drinking), and ASPD were significant predictors of frontal system and affective abnormalities. These effects were different for men and women. The findings suggested that the combination of alcoholism and ASPD leads to greater deficits than the sum of each

Measures of skin conductance and heart rate in alcoholic men and women during memory performance

We examined abnormalities in physiological responses to emotional stimuli associated with long-term chronic alcoholism. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and heart rate (HR) responses were measured in 32 abstinent alcoholic (ALC) and 30 healthy nonalcoholic (NC) men and women undergoing an emotional memory task in an MRI scanner. The task required participants to remember the identity of two emotionally-valenced faces presented at the onset of each trial during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. After viewing the faces, participants saw a distractor image (an alcoholic beverage, nonalcoholic beverage, or scrambled image) followed by a single probe face. The task was to decide whether the probe face matched one of the two encoded faces. Skin conductance measurements (before and after the encoded faces, distractor, and probe) were obtained from electrodes on the index and middle fingers on the left hand. HR measurements (beats per minute before and after the encoded faces, distractor, and probe) were obtained by a pulse oximeter placed on the little finger on the left hand. We expected that, relative to NC participants, the ALC participants would show reduced SCR and HR responses to the face stimuli, and that we would identify greater reactivity to the alcoholic beverage stimuli than to the distractor stimuli unrelated to alcohol. While the beverage type did not differentiate the groups, the ALC group did have reduced skin conductance and HR responses to elements of the task, as compared to the NC group

Frontal brain dysfunction in alcoholism with and without antisocial personality disorder

Marlene Oscar-Berman1,2, Mary M Valmas1,2, Kayle s Sawyer1,2, Shalene M Kirkley1, David A Gansler3, Diane Merritt1,2, Ashley Couture11Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, Boston Campus, Boston, MA, USA; 2Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA; 3Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USAAbstract: Alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) often are comorbid conditions. Alcoholics, as well as nonalcoholic individuals with ASPD, exhibit behaviors associated with prefrontal brain dysfunction such as increased impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. These behaviors can influence drinking motives and patterns of consumption. Because few studies have investigated the combined association between ASPD and alcoholism on neuropsychological functioning, this study examined the influence of ASPD symptoms and alcoholism on tests sensitive to frontal brain deficits. The participants were 345 men and women. Of them, 144 were abstinent alcoholics (66 with ASPD symptoms), and 201 were nonalcoholic control participants (24 with ASPD symptoms). Performances among the groups were examined with Trails A and B tests, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, the Ruff Figural Fluency Test, and Performance subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Measures of affect also were obtained. Multiple regression analyses showed that alcoholism, specific drinking variables (amount and duration of heavy drinking), and ASPD were significant predictors of frontal system and affective abnormalities. These effects were different for men and women. The findings suggested that the combination of alcoholism and ASPD leads to greater deficits than the sum of each.  Keywords: alcoholism, antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), frontal brain system, neuropsychological deficits, reward syste

Brain responsivity to emotional faces differs in men and women with and without a history of alcohol use disorder.

Inclusion of women in research on Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) has shown that gender differences contribute to unique profiles of cognitive, emotional, and neuropsychological dysfunction. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of abstinent individuals with a history of AUD (21 women [AUDw], 21 men [AUDm]) and demographically similar non-AUD control (NC) participants without AUD (21 women [NCw], 21 men [NCm]) to explore how gender and AUD interact to influence brain responses during emotional processing and memory. Participants completed a delayed match-to-sample emotional face memory fMRI task, and brain activation contrasts between a fixation stimulus and pictures of emotional face elicited a similar overall pattern of activation for all four groups. Significant Group by Gender interactions revealed two activation clusters. A cluster in an anterior portion of the middle and superior temporal gyrus, elicited lower activation to the fixation stimulus than to faces for the AUDw as compared to the NCw; that abnormality was more pronounced than the one observed for men. Another cluster in the medial portion of the superior frontal cortex elicited higher activation to the faces by AUDm than NCm, a difference that was more evident than the one observed for women. Together, these findings have added new evidence of AUD-related gender differences in neural responses to facial expressions of emotion

Code and Data for "Alcoholism Gender Differences in Brain Responsivity to Emotional Stimuli"

This archive contains the code and preprocessed data used to generate tables and figures for: Sawyer KS, Maleki N, Urban T, Marinkovic K, Karson S, Ruiz SM, Harris GJ, Oscar-Berman M, "Alcoholism Gender Differences in Brain Responsivity to Emotional Stimuli" (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41723

Data from: Alcoholism gender differences in brain responsivity to emotional stimuli

Men and women may use alcohol to regulate emotions differently, with corresponding differences in neural responses. We explored how the viewing of different types of emotionally salient stimuli impacted brain activity observed through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from 42 long-term abstinent alcoholic (25 women) and 46 nonalcoholic (24 women) participants. Analyses revealed blunted brain responsivity in alcoholic compared to nonalcoholic groups, as well as gender differences in those activation patterns. Brain activation in alcoholic men (ALCM) was significantly lower than in nonalcoholic men (NCM) in regions including rostral middle and superior frontal cortex, precentral gyrus, and inferior parietal cortex, whereas activation was higher in alcoholic women (ALCW) than in nonalcoholic women (NCW) in superior frontal and supramarginal cortical regions. The reduced brain reactivity of ALCM, and increases for ALCW, highlighted divergent brain regions and gender effects, suggesting possible differences in the underlying basis for development of alcohol use disorders

Hippocampal subfield volumes in abstinent men and women with a history of alcohol use disorder.

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) has been associated with abnormalities in hippocampal volumes, but these relationships have not been fully explored with respect to sub-regional volumes, nor in association with individual characteristics such as age, gender differences, drinking history, and memory. The present study examined the impact of those variables in relation to hippocampal subfield volumes in abstinent men and women with a history of AUD. Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 3 Tesla, we obtained brain images from 67 participants with AUD (31 women) and 64 nonalcoholic control (NC) participants (31 women). The average duration of the most recent period of sobriety for AUD participants was 7.1 years. We used Freesurfer 6.0 to segment the hippocampus into 12 regions. These were imputed into statistical models to examine the relationships of brain volume with AUD group, age, gender, memory, and drinking history. Interactions with gender and age were of particular interest. Compared to the NC group, the AUD group had approximately 5% smaller subiculum, CA1, molecular layer, and hippocampal tail regions. Age was negatively associated with volumes for the AUD group in the subiculum and the hippocampal tail, but no significant interactions with gender were identified. The relationships for delayed and immediate memory with hippocampal tail volume differed for AUD and NC groups: Higher scores on tests of immediate and delayed memory were associated with smaller volumes in the AUD group, but larger volumes in the NC group. Length of sobriety was associated with decreasing CA1 volume in women (0.19% per year) and increasing volume size in men (0.38% per year). The course of abstinence on CA1 volume differed for men and women, and the differential relationships of subfield volumes to age and memory could indicate a distinction in the impact of AUD on functions of the hippocampal tail. These findings confirm and extend evidence that AUD, age, gender, memory, and abstinence differentially impact volumes of component parts of the hippocampus

Sexually dimorphic structural abnormalities in major connections of the medial forebrain bundle in alcoholism

Background: The mesocorticolimbic system is particularly susceptible to the effects of chronic alcoholism. Disruption of this system has been linked to drug seeking and the development of Reward Deficiency Syndrome, a neurobiological framework for describing the development and relapsing patterns of addictions. In this study, we evaluated the association of alcoholism and sex with major connections of the medial forebrain bundle (MFB), a prominent mesocorticolimbic fiber pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area with the basal forebrain. Given sex differences in clinical consequences of alcohol consumption, we hypothesized that alcoholic men and women would differ in structural abnormalities of the MFB. Methods: Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data were acquired from 30 abstinent long-term alcoholic individuals (ALC; 9 men) and 25 non-alcoholic controls (NC; 8 men). Major connections of the MFB were extracted using multi-tensor tractography. We compared groups on MFB volume, fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (RD), and axial diffusivity (AD), with hemisphere and sex as independent variables. We also evaluated associations between abnormal structural measures and drinking measures. Results: Analyses revealed significant group-by-sex interactions for FA and RD: while ALC men had lower FA and higher RD compared to NC men, ALC women had higher FA and lower RD compared to NC women. We also detected a significant negative association between FA and number of daily drinks in ALC women. Conclusion: Alcoholism is associated with sexually dimorphic structural abnormalities in the MFB. The results expand upon other findings of differences in brain reward circuitry of alcoholic men and women. Keywords: Alcohol, Reward system, Medial forebrain bundle, Diffusion MRI, Sex, Drinking histor