Abstract
Background
Excessive alcohol intake is a major public health problem and can be triggered by
stress. Heavy drinking in patients with alcohol use disorder also alters neural, physiological,
and emotional stress responses. However, it is unclear whether adaptations in stress-predictive
brain networks can be an early marker of risky drinking behavior.
Methods
Risky social drinkers (regular bingers; n = 53) and light drinker control subjects (n = 51) aged 18 to 53 years completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging–based
sustained stress protocol with repeated measures of subjective stress state, during
which whole-brain functional connectivity was computed. This was followed by prospective
daily ecological momentary assessment for 30 days. We used brain computational predictive
modeling with cross-validation to identify unique brain connectivity predictors of
stress in risky drinkers and determine the prospective utility of stress-brain networks
for subsequent loss of control over drinking.
Results
Risky drinkers had anatomically and functionally distinct stress-predictive brain
networks (showing stronger predictions from visual and motor networks) compared with
light drinkers (default mode and frontoparietal networks). Stress-predictive brain
networks defined for risky drinkers selectively predicted future real-world stress
levels for risky drinkers and successfully predicted prospective future real-world
loss of control over drinking across all participants.
Conclusions
These results indicate adaptations in computationally derived stress-related brain
circuitry among high-risk drinkers, suggesting potential targets for early preventive
intervention and revealing the malleability of the neural processes that govern stress
responses.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 07, 2022
Accepted:
February 22,
2022
Received in revised form:
February 3,
2022
Received:
December 20,
2021
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
