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Latent profiles of substance use, early life stress, and attention/externalizing problems and their association with neural correlates of reinforcement learning in adolescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2023

Kathleen I. Crum*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA Division of Neuroimaging, Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
Joseph Aloi
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
Karina S. Blair
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
Johannah Bashford-Largo
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
Sahil Bajaj
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
Ru Zhang
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
Soonjo Hwang
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA
Amanda Schwartz
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
Jaimie Elowsky
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA
Francesca M. Filbey
Affiliation:
Center for BrainHealth, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA
Matthew Dobbertin
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
R. James Blair
Affiliation:
Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, USA
*
Corresponding author: Kathleen I. Crum; Email: kicrum@iu.edu

Abstract

Background

Adolescent substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and early life stress (ELS) commonly co-occur. These psychopathologies show overlapping neural dysfunction in the form of reduced recruitment of reward processing neuro-circuitries. However, it is unclear to what extent these psychopathologies show common v. different neural dysfunctions as a function of symptom profiles, as no studies have directly compared neural dysfunctions associated with each of these psychopathologies to each other.

Methods

In study 1, a latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted in a sample of 266 adolescents (aged 13–18, 41.7% female, 58.3% male) from a residential youth care facility and the surrounding community to investigate substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and ELS psychopathologies and their co-presentation. In study 2, we examined a subsample of 174 participants who completed the Passive Avoidance learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine differential and/or common reward processing neuro-circuitry dysfunctions associated with symptom profiles based on these co-presentations.

Results

In study 1, LPA identified profiles of substance use plus rule-breaking behaviors, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and ELS. In study 2, the substance use/rule-breaking profile was associated with reduced recruitment of reward processing and attentional neuro-circuitries during the Passive Avoidance task (p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons).

Conclusions

Findings indicate that there is reduced responsivity of striato-cortical regions when receiving outcomes on an instrumental learning task within a profile of adolescents with substance use and rule-breaking behaviors. Mitigating reward processing dysfunction specifically may represent a potential intervention target for substance-use psychopathologies accompanied by rule-breaking behaviors.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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