Publications by authors named "Meghan Martz"

Background: Early substance use initiation (SUI) places youth at substantially higher risk for later substance use disorders. Furthermore, adolescence is a critical period for the maturation of brain networks, the pace and magnitude of which are susceptible to environmental influences and may shape risk for SUI.

Methods: We examined whether patterns of functional brain connectivity during rest (rsFC), measured longitudinally in pre-and-early adolescence, can predict future SUI.

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Adolescence is a period of growth in cognitive performance and functioning. Recently, data-driven measures of brain-age gap, which can index cognitive decline in older populations, have been utilized in adolescent data with mixed findings. Instead of using a data-driven approach, here we assess the maturation status of the brain functional landscape in early adolescence by directly comparing an individual's resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) to the canonical early-life and adulthood communities.

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Background: Detecting and responding to errors is central to goal-directed behavior and cognitive control and is thought to be supported by a network of structures that includes the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. Sex differences in the maturational timing of cognitive control systems create differential periods of vulnerability for psychiatric conditions, such as substance use disorders.

Methods: We examined sex differences in error-related activation across an array of distributed brain regions during a Go/No-Go task in young adults with problem alcohol use (N=69; 34 females; M=19.

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Background: Early substance use initiation (SUI) places youth at substantially higher risk for later substance use disorders. Furthermore, adolescence is a critical period for the maturation of brain networks, the pace and magnitude of which are susceptible to environmental influences and may shape risk for SUI.

Methods: We examined whether patterns of functional brain connectivity during rest (rsFC), measured longitudinally in pre-and-early adolescence, can predict future SUI.

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Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms are believed to result from disrupted neurocognitive development. However, evidence for the clinical and predictive value of neurocognitive assessments in this context has been mixed, and there have been no large-scale efforts to quantify their potential for use in generalizable models that predict individuals' ADHD symptoms in new data. Using data drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD), a consortium that recruited a diverse sample of over 10,000 youth (ages 9-10 at baseline) across 21 U.

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Background: Though largely substance-naïve at enrollment, a proportion of the youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study are expected to initiate substance use (SU) as they transition into later adolescence. With annual data from youth 9-13 years-old, this study aims to describe their SU patterns over time. Here, prevalence rates of use are reported, along with predicted odds of use while analyzing common risk-factors associated with youth SU.

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Having a family history of alcohol use problems (FH+) conveys risk for alcohol use in offspring. Reward-related brain functioning may play a role in this vulnerability. The present study investigated brain function in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) associated with the anticipation of reward in youth with two biological parents with alcohol use problems (FH+2), one biological parent with alcohol use problems (FH+1), and no biological parents with alcohol use problems (FH-).

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Abnormalities in responses to reward and loss are implicated in the etiology of antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits. While there is evidence for sex differences in neural response to reward and loss, it remains unclear how sex differences may moderate links between these neural responses and the phenotypic expression of antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits. This study examined sex differences in associations of neural response to reward and loss with antisocial personality symptoms and psychopathic traits.

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Background: Although a relatively large body of research has identified multiple factors associated with adolescent substance use, less is known about earlier substance-related factors during preadolescence, including curiosity to use substances. The present study examined individual-, peer-, and parent-level domains pertaining to substance use and how these domains vary by sociodemographic subgroups and substance type.

Methods: Participants were 11,864 9- and 10-year-olds from the baseline sample of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

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Article Synopsis
  • Affective dysregulation (AD) is a key feature in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, making individuals sensitive to stress and negative emotions, which can lead to worse outcomes.
  • Research shows that young people at risk for psychosis exhibit similar AD patterns to those diagnosed, with mixed findings on whether AD causes psychosis symptoms over time.
  • A study involving 630 youth found that AD in mid-teens predicted psychotic-like experiences (PLE) three years later, while increasing PLE in late teens was linked to higher AD in early twenties, highlighting the evolving relationship between these factors during development.
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The purpose of this study was to examine if personality traits can be used to characterize subgroups of youth diagnosed with childhood-onset conduct disorder (CD). Participants were 11,552 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Data used in this report came from doi: 10.

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Article Synopsis
  • Substance use is common among young adults (ages 18-25), but not everyone who uses substances does so problematically; this study focuses on understanding the neurocognitive factors that might predict the severity of substance use during this time.
  • The research investigates whether lower efficiency of evidence accumulation (EEA) is a risk factor for substance use, with findings from an fMRI study showing that lower EEA is linked to increased substance use as individuals transition from ages 22 to 26.
  • The study concludes that EEA serves as a significant neurocognitive risk factor for substance use and provides valuable insights into the neural mechanisms behind this behavior, informing theories on brain function and addiction.
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The present study identified subgroups based on inhibitory and reward activation, two key neural functions involved in risk-taking behavior, and then tested the extent to which subgroup differences varied by age, sex, behavioral and familial risk, and substance use. Participants were 145 young adults (18-21 years old; 40.0% female) from the Michigan Longitudinal Study.

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Background: Structural models of psychopathology consistently identify internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) specific factors as well as a superordinate factor that captures their shared variance, the factor. Questions remain, however, about the meaning of these data-driven dimensions and the interpretability and distinguishability of the larger nomological networks in which they are embedded.

Methods: The sample consisted of 10 645 youth aged 9-10 years participating in the multisite Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

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Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) has emerged in recent years as an imaging modality used to examine volitional control over targeted brain activity. rtfMRI-nf has also been applied clinically as a way to train individuals to self-regulate areas of the brain, or circuitry, involved in various disorders. One such application of rtfMRI-nf has been in the domain of addictive behaviors, including substance use.

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Background: The goal of this work was to characterize the maturation of inhibitory control brain function from childhood to early adulthood using longitudinal data collected in two cohorts.

Methods: Functional MRI during a go/no-go task was conducted in 290 participants, with 88 % undergoing repeated scanning at 1- to 2-year intervals. One group entered the study at age 7-13 years (n = 117); the other entered at age 18-23 years (n = 173).

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Background: Both positive expectancies regarding the effects of alcohol and internalizing problems, including negative emotionality and deficits in emotion regulation, are known risk factors for alcohol use disorder (AUD). The current study is the first to investigate how neural response to emotional stimuli may impact alcohol expectancies and risk for AUD.

Methods: Functional neuroimaging data was collected during an emotional word task from 168 emerging adults (M age = 19.

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Article Synopsis
  • The review examines how alcohol use disorder (AUD) can develop through two pathways: externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and highlights neuroimaging studies that identify neural risk factors for AUD.
  • Findings suggest that early issues with prefrontal functioning and later changes in the brain's reward system are linked to externalizing behaviors, while stress and emotional reactivity may play significant roles in internalizing behaviors.
  • Recommendations for future research include exploring the balance of brain circuitry, different stages of AUD, environmental influences like stress, and longitudinal studies to track how brain development, behavior, and alcohol use interact over time.
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Background And Aims: Despite their high comorbidity, the effects of brief interventions (BI) to reduce cannabis use, alcohol use and anxiety symptoms have received little empirical attention. The aims of this study were to examine whether a therapist-delivered BI (TBI) or computer-guided BI (CBI) to address drug use, alcohol consumption (when relevant) and HIV risk behaviors, relative to enhanced usual care (EUC), was associated with reductions in parallel trajectories of alcohol use, cannabis use and anxiety symptoms, and whether demographic characteristics moderated reductions over time.

Design: Latent growth curve modeling was used to examine joint trajectories of alcohol use, cannabis use and anxiety symptoms assessed at 3, 6 and 12 months after baseline enrollment.

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Youth with parental substance use disorder (family-history positive [FH+]) are at an elevated risk for substance use problems, but not all FH+ youth experience this outcome. Frontostriatal brain networks involved in inhibitory control and reward responsivity underlie risk-taking behaviors, but the role of these networks in substance use heterogeneity among FH+ youth has not been examined. The present study examined resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in frontostriatal networks in FH+ youth with and without risky substance use.

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Self-report and cognitive tasks of reward sensitivity and self-regulation have influenced several developmental models that may explain the heightened engagement in risk behaviors during adolescence. Despite some inconsistencies across studies, few studies have explored the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of self-report and cognitive measures of these psychological characteristics in adolescence. The present study evaluated the convergent and discriminant validity of self-report and cognitive measures of reward sensitivity and self-regulation among 2017 adolescents (age M = 16.

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Childhood adversity can negatively impact development across various domains, including physical and mental health. Adverse childhood experiences have been linked to aggression and substance use; however, developmental pathways to explain these associations are not well characterized. Understanding early precursors to later problem behavior and substance use can inform preventive interventions.

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Background: Substance use at an early age conveys substantial risk for later substance-related problems. A better understanding of early risk factors could result in more timely and effective intervention. This study investigated the predictive utility of the brain's response to reward anticipation as a risk factor for early substance use initiation.

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