AFFECTIVE AND NEUROBIOLOGICAL PREDICTORS OF ADOLESCENT-ONSET ALCOHOL USE DISORDE

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The long-term goals of this work are to address questions with great clinical and social policy relevance - understanding developmental pathways and mechanisms of vulnerabiity that can inform early interventions for adolescent-onset alcohol use disorders (AUD), especially those targeting youth with affective vulnerabilities. The short-term goals are to test key features of a developmental model focusing on elected genetic, environmental, behavioral and neurobiological factors as they impact risk for developing AUD during adolescence. The design includes cross-sectional compraisons as well as a prospective longitudinal study of young adolescents with high and low familial loading for depression (HIGH-DEP vs. LOW_DEP) followed from mid to late adolescence. There are four sepcific aims of this research: 1. To examine the impact of familial loading for depression on the risk to develop AUD during adolescence. 2. To examin the effects of familial loading for expression on underlying neural circuits related to mood and affect - especially those mediating behavioral and physiologc arousal and affective control - and their association with the risk to develop AUD duing adolescence. 3. To examine the specific contributions of genetic and environmental risk factors for the risk to develop AUD during adolescence. 4. To examine prospectively the effect of developing AUD on neural circuitry involved in affective arousal and control.