Examining personality and alcohol expectancies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with adolescents.
OBJECTIVE
Personality and alcohol expectancies have been examined as risk factors for the initiation and maintenance of alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. Differences in processing appetitive stimuli are seen as a mechanism for personality's influence on behavior, and that mechanism predisposes individuals to form more positive expectancies for alcohol. The go/no-go task has been used to show how personality differences influence responding to appetitive stimuli in adolescents and adults, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to examine the relation of go/no-go responding to personality in adult males. However, no study to date has examined the relation between fMRI responding, personality and alcohol expectancies in adolescents.


METHODS
Forty-six adolescents (ages 12-14 years; 61% male) with minimal substance use histories completed measures of neuroticism, extraversion, and alcohol expectancies, and performed a go/no-go task during fMRI acquisition.


RESULTS
Greater blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to inhibition predicted fewer expectancies of cognitive and motor improvements but more expectancies of cognitive and motor impairment from alcohol. In addition, extraverted youths reported more positive alcohol expectancies. However, BOLD response did not predict neuroticism or extraversion.


CONCLUSIONS
These preliminary results suggest that decreased inhibitory neural processing may contribute to more positive and less negative expectancies, which can eventually lead to problem drinking. Further, extraversion may also yield more positive expectancies and could underlie a vulnerability to disordered alcohol use.
Anderson
Kristen G
KG
University of California San Diego, Department of Psychiatry, 3350 La Jolla Village Drive (151B), San Diego, CA 92161, USA.
Schweinsburg
Alecia
A
Paulus
Martin P
MP
Brown
Sandra A
SA
Tapert
Susan
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000150:complications*; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000033:anatomy & histology*