Abstract
Alcohol exposure typically begins in adolescence, and heavy binge drinking is associated with health risk behaviors. Event-related oscillations (EROs) may represent sensitive biomarkers or endophenotypes for early alcohol exposure as well as other risk behaviors such as suicidal thoughts and actions. In this study, young adults (age 18–30 years) of American Indian (AI) (n = 479) and Mexican American (MA) (n = 705) ancestry were clinically assessed, and EROs were generated to happy, sad and neutral faces. Extreme adolescent binge drinking (10+ drinks) was common (20%) in this population of AI/MA and associated with a significantly increased risk of a lifetime history of suicidal acts (SA, suicide attempts, deaths) but not suicidal thoughts (ST, ideation, plans). ST were reported among MA participants, whereas SA were more common among AI young adults. Extreme adolescent binge drinking was also associated with errors in detection of sad and neutral faces, increases in delta ERO energy, and decreases in phase locking (PL), particularly in parietal areas. A lifetime history of ST was associated with increases in delta ERO energy and PL, whereas SA were associated with decreases in both. These studies suggest that ERO measures may represent important potential biomarkers of adolescent extreme binge drinking and risk for suicidal behaviors.
Highlights
Alcohol use disorders (AUD) and problems usually follow a developmental trajectory that can begin in early adolescence, continuing into young adulthood, and persisting into older ages [1,2,3,4].When adolescents and young adults begin to drink, they often engage in “binge drinking” (5 drinks for boys, 4 for girls per occasion) [5,6]
A history of adolescent extreme binge drinking was associated with decreases in connectivity in all three cortical areas in response to sad facial expressions, as indexed by local phase locking
A history of suicidal ideation without suicidal acts was associated with increases in delta Event-related oscillations (EROs) energy and phase locking in response to happy faces in the frontal cortex
Summary
Alcohol use disorders (AUD) and problems usually follow a developmental trajectory that can begin in early adolescence, continuing into young adulthood, and persisting into older ages [1,2,3,4]. When adolescents and young adults begin to drink, they often engage in “binge drinking” (5 drinks for boys, 4 for girls per occasion) [5,6]. There are emerging data demonstrating that some adolescents report drinking amounts that are double or more the standard binge threshold, consuming 10+ or 15+ drinks per occasion, which has been called “high-intensity drinking” or “extreme binge drinking” [6,7,8,9].
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