Longitudinal examination of alcohol demand and alcohol-related reinforcement as predictors of heavy drinking and adverse alcohol consequences in emerging adults.

Background And Aims: Behavioral economic theory predicts that high alcohol demand and high proportionate alcohol-related reinforcement are important determinants of risky alcohol use in emerging adults, but the majority of research to date has been cross-sectional in nature. The present study investigated prospective and dynamic relationships between alcohol demand and proportionate alcohol-related reinforcement in relation to heavy drinking days and alcohol problems.

Design: Longitudinal cohort with assessments every 4 months for 20 months.

Cannabis involvement and neuropsychological performance: findings from the Human Connectome Project.

Background: There is evidence that heavy cannabis use is associated with decrements in cognitive performance, but findings are mixed and studies are often limited by small sample sizes and narrow adjustment for potential confounding variables. In a comparatively large sample, the current study examined associations between multiple indicators of cannabis use in relation to performance on a variety of neuropsychological tasks.

Methods: Participants were 1121 adults (54% female) enrolled in the Human Connectome Project.

Urinary tetrahydrocannabinol is associated with poorer working memory performance and alterations in associated brain activity.

Worldwide, cannabis is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances and cannabis use has been implicated in poorer performance in several cognitive domains, including working memory (WM). However, the neural mechanisms underlying these WM decrements are not well understood and the current study investigated the association of cannabis involvement with WM performance and associated neural activation in the Human Connectome Project (N = 1038). Multiple indicators of cannabis involvement were examined in relation to behavioral performance and brain activity in a visual N-back task using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Negative urgency moderates reactivity to laboratory stress inductions.

Impulsive personality traits refer to a group of self-reported dispositions about self-regulatory capacity, several of which have been linked to diverse forms of psychopathology. One of these is negative urgency (NUR), the propensity to act out when experiencing negative emotions, which has been linked to substance use disorders and eating disorders. However, few laboratory studies have investigated the extent to which self-reported NUR relates to an individual's in vivo emotional and behavioral responses.

Neuroanatomical foundations of delayed reward discounting decision making.

Resolving tradeoffs between smaller immediate rewards and larger delayed rewards is ubiquitous in daily life and steep discounting of future rewards is associated with several psychiatric conditions. This form of decision-making is referred to as delayed reward discounting (DRD) and the features of brain structure associated with DRD are not well understood. The current study characterized the relationship between gray matter volume (GMV) and DRD in a sample of 1038 healthy adults (54.

Delay discounting differences in brain activation, connectivity, and structure in individuals with addiction: a systematic review protocol.

Background: Delayed reward discounting (DRD), the degree to which future rewards are discounted relative to immediate rewards, is used as an index of impulsive decision-making and has been associated with a number of problematic health behaviors. Given the robust behavioral association between DRD and addictive behavior, there is an expanding literature investigating the differences in the functional and structural correlates of DRD in the brain between addicted and healthy individuals. However, there has yet to be a systematic review which characterizes differences in regional brain activation, functional connectivity, and structure and places them in the larger context of the DRD literature.

The Neuroeconomics of Tobacco Demand: An Initial Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Cigarette Cost-Benefit Decision Making in Male Smokers.

How the brain processes cigarette cost-benefit decision making remains largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated the neural correlates of decisions for cigarettes (0-10 cigarettes) at varying levels of price during a Cigarette Purchase Task (CPT) in male regular smokers (N = 35). Differential neural activity was examined between choices classified as inelastic, elastic, and suppressed demand, operationalized as consumption unaffected by cost, partially suppressed by cost, and entirely suppressed by cost, respectively.

Association between overall rate of change in rising breath alcohol concentration and the magnitude of acute tolerance of subjective intoxication via the Mellanby method.

Objective: The magnitude of acute tolerance is a strong predictor of the development of longer-term chronic tolerance and plays a decisive role in risky decisions (e.g., driving after drinking).

Syntax for calculation of discounting indices from the monetary choice questionnaire and probability discounting questionnaire.

The 27-item Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ; Kirby, Petry, & Bickel, 1999) and 30-item Probability Discounting Questionnaire (PDQ; Madden, Petry, & Johnson, 2009) are widely used, validated measures of preferences for immediate versus delayed rewards and guaranteed versus risky rewards, respectively. The MCQ measures delayed discounting by asking individuals to choose between rewards available immediately and larger rewards available after a delay. The PDQ measures probability discounting by asking individuals to choose between guaranteed rewards and a chance at winning larger rewards.

Separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation.

Rationale: Caffeine is commonly believed to offset the acute effects of alcohol, but some evidence suggests that cognitive processes remain impaired when caffeine and alcohol are coadministered.

Objectives: No previous study has investigated the separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation, processes thought to be critical for self-regulation. This was the purpose of the current study.

Clarifying the neural basis for incentive salience of tobacco cues in smokers.

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, smoking cues have been found to elicit increases in brain activity in regions associated with processing rewarding and emotional stimuli. However, most smoking cue studies to date have reported effects relative to neutral control stimuli with no incentive properties, making it unclear whether the observed activation pertains to value in general or the value of cigarettes in particular. The current fMRI study sought to clarify the neural activity reflecting tobacco-specific incentive value versus domain-general incentive value by examining smoking cues, neutral cues, and a third set of cues, monetary cues, which served as an active control condition.

Effects of acute alcohol tolerance on perceptions of danger and willingness to drive after drinking.

Rationale: Drinking and driving is associated with elevated rates of motor vehicle accidents and fatalities. Previous research suggests that alcohol impairs judgments about the dangers of risky behaviors; however, how alcohol affects driving-related judgments is less clear. Impairments have also been shown to differ across limbs of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) curve, which is known as acute tolerance.

The neuroeconomics of alcohol demand: an initial investigation of the neural correlates of alcohol cost-benefit decision making in heavy drinking men.

Neuroeconomics integrates concepts and methods from psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience to understand how the brain makes decisions. In economics, demand refers to the relationship between a commodity's consumption and its cost, and, in behavioral studies, high alcohol demand has been consistently associated with greater alcohol misuse. Relatively little is known about how the brain processes demand decision making, and the current study is an initial investigation of the neural correlates of alcohol demand among heavy drinkers.

Item-based analysis of delayed reward discounting decision making.

Delayed reward discounting (DRD) is a behavioral economic index of time preference, referring to how much an individual devalues a reward based on its delay in time, and has been linked to a wide array of health behaviors. It is commonly assessed using a task that asks participants to make dichotomous choices between two monetary rewards, one available immediately and the other after a delay. This study sought to shorten an extended iterative DRD assessment to increase its versatility and efficiency.

Left-digit price effects on smoking cessation motivation.

Background: Cigarette price increases have been associated with increases in smoking cessation, but relatively little is known about this relationship at the level of individual smokers. To address this and to inform tax policy, the goal of this study was to apply a behavioural economic approach to the relationship between the price of cigarettes and the probability of attempting smoking cessation.

Methods: Adult daily smokers (n=1074; ie, 5+ cigarettes/day; 18+ years old; ≥8th grade education) completed in-person descriptive survey assessments.

Neural correlates of behavioral variation in healthy adults' antisaccade performance.

Cognitive control is required for correct antisaccade performance. High antisaccade error rates characterize certain psychiatric disorders, but can be highly variable, even among healthy groups. Antisaccade data were acquired from a large sample of healthy undergraduates, and error rate was quantified.

Initial development of a measure of expectancies for combinations of alcohol and caffeine: the Caffeine + Alcohol Combined Effects Questionnaire (CACEQ).

Caffeinated alcoholic beverage (CAB) consumption is widespread among young adults in the United States and is associated with increased negative consequences from alcohol. In addition to the direct pharmacological effects of adding caffeine to alcohol, another possible risk mechanism is via socially learned expectancies, which has received very little consideration. The current study conducted an initial psychometric validation of a measure of CAB expectancies to facilitate research in this area.

The neuroeconomics of nicotine dependence: a preliminary functional magnetic resonance imaging study of delay discounting of monetary and cigarette rewards in smokers.

Neuroeconomics integrates behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience to understand the neurobiological basis for normative and maladaptive decision making. Delay discounting is a behavioral economic index of impulsivity that reflects capacity to delay gratification and has been consistently associated with nicotine dependence. This preliminary study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine delay discounting for money and cigarette rewards in 13 nicotine dependent adults.

Evidence from cluster analysis for differentiation of antisaccade performance groups based on speed/accuracy trade-offs.

Anti and pro-saccade performance in single or mixed contexts was explored in a large sample of young adults (n=281). ANOVAs were first conducted to evaluate trial type, context and gender effects. A cluster analysis was then used to determine whether subgroups could be identified based on saccadic performance variables.

Is talk "cheap"? An initial investigation of the equivalence of alcohol purchase task performance for hypothetical and actual rewards.

Background: Behavioral economic alcohol purchase tasks (APTs) are self-report measures of alcohol demand that assess estimated consumption at escalating levels of price. However, the relationship between estimated performance for hypothetical outcomes and choices for actual outcomes has not been determined. The present study examined both the correspondence between choices for hypothetical and actual outcomes, and the correspondence between estimated alcohol consumption and actual drinking behavior.

The Role of Genetics in Nicotine Dependence: Mapping the Pathways from Genome to Syndrome.

Nicotine dependence continues to be a major public health problem worldwide and there is unequivocal evidence that genetics play a substantial role in its etiology. This review provides an overview of the evidence for genetic influences and recent advances in the field. Traditional quantitative genetics studies have revealed nicotine dependence is heritable and molecular genetics studies are providing increasing evidence that the genes responsible for nicotine's pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are particularly important.

Delayed reward discounting and addictive behavior: a meta-analysis.

Rationale: Delayed reward discounting (DRD) is a behavioral economic index of impulsivity and numerous studies have examined DRD in relation to addictive behavior. To synthesize the findings across the literature, the current review is a meta-analysis of studies comparing DRD between criterion groups exhibiting addictive behavior and control groups.

Objectives: The meta-analysis sought to characterize the overall patterns of findings, systematic variability by sample and study type, and possible small study (publication) bias.