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

描述（由申请人提供）：酒精的使用和社会环境是影响年轻人冒险决定的两个最大因素。然而，主要研究者了解了每个因素在单独诱导青少年冒险行为方面的已知效力，以及主要研究者了解了年轻人在同伴在场的情况下饮酒的频率，之前没有研究试图检查它们同时发生的和潜在的相互作用。在我们的青少年和青年决策模型中，大脑认知控制和奖励处理系统的非同步成熟变化产生了一段时间的风险倾向增加，对决策的特定影响的敏感性增加。我们假设酒精和同伴影响主要影响大脑决策回路的不同组成部分，酒精影响区域与认知控制最密切相关，同伴影响作用于奖励处理系统。这些单独的有害影响结合在一起，可能会产生一种强大的“冒险鸡尾酒”，破坏大脑决策回路中通常相互抵消的组成部分的处理过程，从而增加从事冒险行为的倾向，从而产生潜在的严重后果（例如鲁莽驾驶、危险的性活动、犯罪）。目前的应用包括行为研究，旨在测试急性酒精消费和同伴影响对年轻人风险决策的主要和相互作用，以及fMRI研究，旨在测试我们的青少年和年轻人决策的神经生物学框架，以及有关酒精和社会影响的单独神经位点的相关假设。为了进行这些研究，一个研究小组在执行功能的认知神经科学、青少年和年轻人的社会心理发展以及酒精对认知和情感的影响方面汇集了专业知识。拟议的研究将对社会环境和酒精对年轻人冒险行为的影响产生根本性的见解，并将为制定更有效的预防和干预战略提供信息。

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.