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Neural mechanisms of risky decision making in adolescents reporting frequent alcohol and/or marijuana use

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Abstract

Because adolescence is a period of heightened exploration of new behaviors, there is a natural increase in risk taking including initial use of alcohol and marijuana. In order to better understand potential differences in neurocognitive functioning among adolescents who use drugs, the current study aimed to identify the neural substrates of risky decision making that differ among adolescents who are primary users of alcohol or marijuana, primary users of both alcohol and marijuana, and controls who report primary use of neither drug. Participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comparison of brain activation during risky decisions versus non-risky decisions across all subjects revealed greater response to risky decisions in dorsal anterior cinguate cortex (dACC), anterior insula, ventral striatum, and lateral prefrontal cortex. Group comparisons across non-using controls, primary marijuana, primary alcohol, and alcohol and marijuana users revealed several notable differences in the recruitment of brain regions. Adolescents who use both alcohol and marijauna show decreased response during risky decision making compared to controls in insula, striatum, and thalamus, and reduced differentiation of increasing risk in dACC, insula, striatum, and superior parietal lobe compared to controls. These results provide evidence of differential engagement of risky decision making circuits among adolescents with varying levels of alcohol and marijuana use, and may provide useful targets for longitudinal studies that explicitly address causality of these differences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106, USA

    Eric D. Claus, Kent E. Hutchison & Angela D. Bryan

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd, Mail Code: DC7P, Portland, OR, 97239, USA

    Sarah W. Feldstein Ewing

  3. Psychology Department, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave, VCLS 208, Vancouver, WA, 98686-9600, USA

    Renee E. Magnan

  4. Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale University, 135 College Street, Suite 200, New Haven, CT, 06510-2483, USA

    Erika Montanaro

  5. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Muenzinger D244, 345 UCB, Boulder, CO, 80309-0345, USA

    Kent E. Hutchison & Angela D. Bryan

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  1. Eric D. Claus
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Correspondence to Eric D. Claus.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA017390).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of Univesrity of New Mexico Human Research Protection Office and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed assent (written) and informed parental/guardian consent (audiorecorded) were obtained for all individual participants included in the study.

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Supplemental Figure 1

Regions that showed differences in the omnibus test across control, marijuana only, alcohol only, and marijuana + alcohol groups for the mean risk contrast controlling for a) age; b) CBCL; c) CDI; d) CASS-S; e) Gender; f) Hard drug use, past 3 months; g) Hard drug use, ever; h) IMPSS; i) RCMAS. (GIF 288 kb)

High Resolution Image (TIFF 961 kb)

Supplemental Figure 2

Regions that showed differences in the omnibus test across control, marijuana only, alcohol only, and marijuana + alcohol groups for the linear risk contrast controlling for a) age; b) CBCL; c) CDI; d) CASS-S; e) Gender; f) Hard drug use, past 3 months; g) Hard drug use, ever; h) IMPSS; i) RCMAS. (GIF 278 kb)

High Resolution Image (TIFF 941 kb)

Supplemental Figure 3

Regions that showed differences in the omnibus test across control, marijuana only, alcohol only, and marijuana + alcohol groups for the mean risk (a) and linear risk (b) contrast controlling for age, gender, CBCL, CDI, CASS-S, Hard drug use past 3 months, Hard drug use ever, IMPSS, and RCMAS. (JPEG 286 kb)

High Resolution Image (TIFF 236 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

(DOCX 15 kb)

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Claus, E.D., Feldstein Ewing, S.W., Magnan, R.E. et al. Neural mechanisms of risky decision making in adolescents reporting frequent alcohol and/or marijuana use. Brain Imaging and Behavior 12, 564–576 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-017-9723-x

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