Neural Predictors of Initiating Alcohol Use During Adolescence.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Underage drinking is widely recognized as a leading public health and social problem for adolescents in the United States. Being able to identify at-risk adolescents before they initiate heavy alcohol use could have important clinical and public health implications; however, few investigations have explored individual-level precursors of adolescent substance use. This prospective investigation used machine learning with demographic, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data in substance-naive adolescents to identify predictors of alcohol use initiation by age 18.

Method

Participants (N=137) were healthy substance-naive adolescents (ages 12-14) who underwent neuropsychological testing and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI and fMRI), and then wer

SUBMITTER: Squeglia LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5288131 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature