Alcohol & Peer Context Effects on Behavior & Neural Correlates of Risks in Youths

描述(申请人提供)：酒精使用和社会背景对年轻人的冒险决定影响最大的两个因素。然而，首席调查员指出，每个因素在青年中单独诱发冒险行为的已知效力，以及首席调查员指出，年轻人在同龄人面前饮酒的频率，先前没有任何研究试图检查它们同时存在的和潜在的相互作用的影响。在我们青春期和成年期的决策模型中，大脑认知控制和奖励处理系统的非同步成熟变化会导致一段时间内风险倾向增加，并对决策产生特定影响的敏感性增加。我们假设，酒精和同伴的影响主要影响大脑决策电路的不同部分，其中酒精影响的区域与认知控制最密切，而同伴的影响作用于奖励处理系统。这些单独的有害影响的组合可能会产生强大的“冒险鸡尾酒”，扰乱大脑决策电路中正常抵消的部分的处理，从而增加从事冒险行为的倾向，并可能产生严重的后果(例如鲁莽驾驶、危险的性行为、犯罪)。目前的应用包括旨在测试急性饮酒和同伴影响对年轻人关于风险决策的主要和交互影响的行为研究，以及旨在测试青少年和年轻人决策的神经生物学框架的功能磁共振研究，以及关于酒精和社会影响的单独神经位置的相关假设。为了进行这些研究，已经组建了一个研究小组，他们拥有执行功能认知神经科学、青少年和年轻人的心理社会发展以及酒精对认知和情感的影响等方面的综合专业知识。拟议的研究将对社会背景和酒精对年轻人冒险行为的影响产生基本的见解，并将为制定更有效的预防和干预策略提供信息。 与公共健康相关：了解酒精暴露后以及在同伴在场时导致决策能力下降的具体机制，对于制定干预措施很重要。酒精和同龄人的存在可能结合在一起影响青年的决策能力，而决策方面的这些缺陷会影响现实世界的行为，因此，成功的干预措施必须植根于个人因素的组合(例如，降低青年对同伴影响的敏感性)，同时改变社会背景。拟议的研究将采用行为和功能磁共振方法，以获得对社会背景和酒精对冒险行为的独立和交互影响的基本见解，并将为开发更有效的预防和干预策略提供信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two of the strongest influences on young adult risk taking decisions are alcohol use and social context. Yet the principal investigator the known potency of each factor in individually inducing risk-taking among youth, and the principal investigator the frequency with which young people consume alcohol in the presence of their peers, no prior research has sought to examine their concurrent and potentially interactive effects. In our model of decision-making in adolescence and young adulthood, asynchronous maturational changes in the brain's cognitive control and reward processing systems yield a period of increased proclivity for risk, and increased susceptibility to specific influences on decision-making. We hypothesize that alcohol and peer influences have their primary impacts on separate components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, with alcohol-affecting regions most closely linked to cognitive control, and peer influence acting upon the reward processing system. The combination of these individually deleterious influences may thus create a powerful "risk-taking cocktail" that disrupts processing within normally offsetting components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, and thereby increases the tendency to engage in risk-taking behaviors with potentially serious consequences (e.g. reckless driving, risky sexual activity, crime). The present application includes behavioral studies designed to test the main and interactive effects of acute alcohol consumption and peer influence on young adults' decisions about risk, as well as an fMRI studies designed to test our neurobiological framework for adolescent and young adult decision-making and the associated hypothesis regarding the separate neural loci of alcohol and social influences. In order to conduct these studies, a research team with combined expertise in the cognitive neuroscience of executive function, the psychosocial development of adolescents and young adults, and the influences of alcohol on cognition and affect, has been assembled. The proposed studies will yield fundamental insights into the effects of social context and alcohol on young adults' risk-taking behaviors, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Knowledge of the specific mechanisms that lead to diminished decision making capacity following alcohol exposure and in the presence of peers is important to the design of interventions. To the extent that alcohol and the presence of peers may combine to impact a youth's decision-making capabilities, and these deficits in decision-making affect real world behaviors, successful interventions must be rooted in a combination of individual factors (e.g., decreasing a youth's susceptibility to peer influences) while simultaneously changing the social context. The proposed studies will deploy behavioral and fMRI methods to yield fundamental insights into the independent and interactive effects of social context and alcohol on risk-taking, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies.