Jonatan Ottino-González, Renata B Cupertino, Zhipeng Cao, Sage Hahn, Devarshi Pancholi, Matthew D Albaugh, Ty Brumback, Fiona C Baker, Sandra A Brown, Duncan B Clark, Massimiliano de Zambotti, David B Goldston, Beatriz Luna, Bonnie J Nagel, Kate B Nooner, Kilian M Pohl, Susan F Tapert, Wesley K Thompson, Terry L Jernigan, Patricia Conrod, Scott Mackey, Hugh Garavan
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Recently, we demonstrated that a distinct pattern of structural covariance networks (SCN) from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived measurements of brain cortical thickness characterized young adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and predicted current and future problematic drinking in adolescents relative to controls. Here, we establish the robustness and value of SCN for identifying heavy alcohol users in three additional independent studies. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies using data from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics (PING) study (n = 400, age range = 14-22 years), the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) (n = 272, age range = 17-22 years) and the Human Connectome Project (HCP) (n = 375, age range = 22-37 years)...
September 19, 2023: Addiction