Auburn Research Day 2021

B i omed i ca l Resea rch | Gr adua te / Undergr adua te St udent Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) Meta-Analysis: Lifetime Alcohol Consumption and Brain Activation Across Cognitive and Emotional FMRI Tasks 028

C. Ridner; B. Campbell; J.L. Robinson; S.K. Blaine Department of Psychological Sciences, Auburn University

Purpose: Aggregating neuroimaging results via a coordinate based, statistically driven, whole-brain analysis allows us to identify common functional brain changes that may be related to lifetime alcohol consumption, irrespective of task. Methods: We coalesced neuroimaging studies from Pubmed, Neurosynth and BrainMap to examine the functional consequences of lifetime alcohol consumption. Studies from searches using the terms “alcohol and fMRI” were subsequently screened for participants with at least some lifetime alcohol consumption, of which no participant was receiving treatment for an Alcohol Use Disorder. A final sample of 83 studies involving 4331 participants were included in the analysis. Contrasts were divided into two categories. Category 1 included activation associated with greater lifetime alcohol use. Category 2 included activation associated with less lifetime alcohol use. Two activation likelihood estimation analyses were run with a cluster level family-wise error (FWE) of 0.05, p = 0.001, and a 1000 permutation threshold using GingerALE version 3.0.2.

Results: Irrespective of task, greater alcohol consumption was consistently associated with increased activation in the left putamen and left insula, while less lifetime alcohol consumption was associated with increased activity in the left dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) and the left insula. Conclusions: Taken together, our results provide support for alcohol-related aberrations related to awareness and cognitive control. Specifically, our results highlight a positive association between lifetime alcohol and increases putamen activity, which may indicate a shift toward habit-based responding, and greater left thalamic activation, potentially indicative of greater physiological arousal. Greater habit-based responding and increased physiological arousal have been linked to Alcohol Use Disorders. In regard to lesser alcohol consumption, we found consistent patterns of increases in the dACC, a key node in decision-making. Finally, increased activity in the left insula in those who consumed less alcohol over their lifetimes may be related to better self- awareness and interoception. In sum, this analysis represents a comprehensive, quantitative review of neurofunctional differences associated with lifetime alcohol use. This research was supported by K99-AA025401.

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