The Galician Beverage Picture Set (GBPS): A standardized database of alcohol and non-alcohol images

Mesocorticolimbic system reactivity to alcohol use-related visual cues as a function of alcohol sensitivity phenotype: A pilot fMRI study

Low sensitivity (LS) to alcohol is a risk factor for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Compared to peers with high sensitivity (HS), LS individuals drink more, report more problems, and exhibit potentiated alcohol cue reactivity (ACR). Heightened ACR suggests LS confers AUD risk via incentive sensitization, which is thought to take place in the mesocorticolimbic system. This study examined neural ACR in LS and HS individuals. Young adults (N = 32, M age=20.3) were recruited based on the Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire (HS: n = 16; LS: n = 16; 9 females/group). Participants completed an event-related fMRI ACR task. Group LS had higher ACR in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex than group HS. In group LS, ACR in left caudomedial orbitofrontal cortex or left putamen was low at low alcohol use levels and high at heavier or more problematic alcohol use levels, whereas the opposite was true in group HS. Alcohol use level also was associated with the level of ACR in left substantia nigra among males in group LS. Taken together, results suggest elevated mesocorticolimbic ACR among LS individuals, especially those using alcohol at hazardous levels. Future studies with larger samples are warranted to determine the neurobiological loci underlying LS-based amplified ACR and AUD risk.

Türk İçecek Resim Setinin Geçerliği ve Standardizasyonu: Bilişsel Yanlılık Ölçümü ve Modifikasyon Paradigmaları İçin Kontrollü Resim Seti

Amaç: Bu çalışmada alkol içerikli uyaranlara ilişkin bilişsel yanlılık ölçüm ve modifikasyonu araştırmalarında kullanılabilecek, Türk örneklemi üzerinde geçerliliği ve standardizasyonu yapılmış içecek resim seti oluşturulması amaçlanmıştır. Gereç ve Yöntem: Alkollü ve alkolsüz içecek resimleri 3 pasif bağlamda (dolu bir şişede içecek, boş bir bardakla dolu bir şişe ve dolu bir bardakla dolu bir şişe içecek) ve 3 aktif bağlamda (içecek servis edilirken, açılırken ve tüketilirken) fotoğraflanmıştır. Sonrasında 120 üniversite öğrencisine Alkol Kullanım Bozukluğu Tarama Testi, içecek resimlerini tanıma ve derecelendirme deneyleri uygulanmıştır. Bulgular: Türk İçecek Resim Seti kolaylıkla tanınabilen, popülasyon tarafından sıklıkla tüketilen içecek resimlerinden oluşmaktadır. Alkollü içecek resimleri ağır içici grupta daha fazla içme isteği uyandırabilmiştir. Pasif bağlamda sunulan içecekler aktif resimlere göre daha hızlı tanınmıştır. Sonuç: Türk İçecek Resim Seti, alkol bağımlılığında örtük bilişsel süreçleri araştırmak için çeşitli deneysel paradigmalarda kullanılabilecektir.

Purpose in life, neural alcohol cue reactivity and daily alcohol use in social drinkers

BACKGROUND AND AIM

Alcohol craving is an urge to consume alcohol that commonly precedes drinking; however, craving does not lead to drinking for all people under all circumstances. The current study measured the correlation between neural reactivity and alcohol cues as a risk, and purpose in daily life as a protective factor that may influence the link between alcohol craving and the subsequent amount of consumption.

DESIGN

Observational study that correlated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on neural cue reactivity and ecological momentary assessments (EMA) on purpose in life and alcohol use.

SETTING

Two college campuses in the United States.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 54 college students (37 women, 16 men, and 1 other) recruited via campus-based groups from January 2019 to October 2020.

MEASUREMENTS

Participants underwent fMRI while viewing images of alcohol; we examined activity within the ventral striatum, a key region of interest implicated in reward and craving. Participants then completed 28 days of EMA and answered questions about daily levels of purpose in life and alcohol use, including how much they craved and consumed alcohol.

FINDINGS

A significant three-way interaction indicated that greater alcohol cue reactivity within the ventral striatum was associated with heavier alcohol use following craving in daily life only when people were previously feeling a lower than usual sense of purpose. By contrast, individuals with heightened neural alcohol cue reactivity drank less in response to craving if they were feeling a stronger than their usual sense of purpose in the preceding moments (b_interaction  = -0.086, P < 0.001, 95% CI = -0.137, -0.035).

CONCLUSIONS

Neural sensitivity to alcohol cues within the ventral striatum appears to be a potential risk for increased alcohol use in social drinkers, when people feel less purposeful. Enhancing daily levels of purpose in life may promote alcohol moderation among social drinkers who show relatively higher reactivity to alcohol cues.

Forgetting Alcohol: A Double-Blind, Randomized Controlled Trial Investigating Memory Inhibition Training in Young Binge Drinkers

Background

Binge Drinking (BD) has been associated with altered inhibitory control and augmented alcohol-cue reactivity. Memory inhibition (MI), the ability to voluntarily suppress unwanted thoughts/memories, may lead to forgetting of memories in several psychiatric conditions. However, despite its potential clinical implications, no study to date has explored the MI abilities in populations with substance misuse, such as binge drinkers (BDs).

Method

This study—registered in the NIH Clinical Trials Database (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT05237414)—aims firstly to examine the behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of MI among college BDs. For this purpose, 45 BDs and 45 age-matched non/low-drinkers (50% female) will be assessed by EEG while performing the Think/No-Think Alcohol task, a paradigm that evaluates alcohol-related MI. Additionally, this work aims to evaluate an alcohol-specific MI intervention protocol using cognitive training (CT) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) while its effects on behavioral and EEG outcomes are assessed. BDs will be randomly assigned to one MI training group: combined [CT and verum tDCS applied over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)], cognitive (CT and sham tDCS), or control (sham CT and sham tDCS). Training will occur in three consecutive days, in three sessions. MI will be re-assessed in BDs through a post-training EEG assessment. Alcohol use and craving will be measured at the first EEG assessment, and both 10-days and 3-months post-training. In addition, behavioral and EEG data will be collected during the performance of an alcohol cue reactivity (ACR) task, which evaluates attentional bias toward alcoholic stimuli, before, and after the MI training sessions.

Discussion

This study protocol will provide the first behavioral and neurofunctional MI assessment in BDs. Along with poor MI abilities, BDs are expected to show alterations in event-related potentials and functional connectivity patterns associated with MI. Results should also demonstrate the effectiveness of the protocol, with BDs exhibiting an improved capacity to suppress alcohol-related memories after both combined and cognitive training, along with a reduction in alcohol use and craving in the short/medium-term. Collectively, these findings might have major implications for the understanding and treatment of alcohol misuse.

Clinical Trial Registration

[www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [NCT05237414].

Enhanced conditioned "liking" of novel visual cues paired with alcohol or non-alcohol beverage container images among individuals at higher risk for alcohol use disorder

RATIONALE/OBJECTIVE

This study used an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure to assess the affective properties of a CS for ingested drug reward in humans. Specifically, the study tested whether the evaluative response ("liking"/"disliking") to an arbitrary visual stimulus ("CS₂," e.g., a purple hexagon) could be changed through pairings with an alcohol or non-alcohol beverage cue ("CS₁," e.g., a full wine glass, a juice box), which is ostensibly a conditioned visual predictive stimulus for alcohol or non-alcohol liquid reward, respectively.

METHODS

Participants (N = 369, 18-23 years, 66% female, 79% white, 21% reporting no alcohol use ever or in the past year) received 24 CS₁ pairings with each CS₂. CS₂ and CS₁ evaluations were assessed pre- and post-conditioning.

RESULTS

Alcohol and non-alcohol CS₂ "liking" correlated with alcohol use. "Liking" of the alcohol but not non-alcohol CS₁ also correlated with alcohol use. Alcohol CS₁ "liking" also correlated with alcohol and non-alcohol CS₂ 'liking," whereas non-alcohol CS₁ 'liking" correlated with non-alcohol but not alcohol CS₂ "liking."

CONCLUSIONS

Taken together, findings support the idea that drug-related visual stimuli acquire appetitive (hedonic and/or incentive) properties as a function of individual differences in drug use, which entail individual differences in exposure to the conditioning effects of addictive substances like alcohol. Findings also suggest a link between drug use and the propensity to attribute affective/motivational significance to reward-predictive cues in general.

Raising the bar: improving methodological rigour in cognitive alcohol research

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

A range of experimental paradigms claim to measure the cognitive processes underpinning alcohol use, suggesting that heightened attentional bias, greater approach tendencies and reduced cue-specific inhibitory control are important drivers of consumption. This paper identifies methodological shortcomings within this broad domain of research and exemplifies them in studies focused specifically on alcohol-related attentional bias.

ARGUMENT AND ANALYSIS

We highlight five main methodological issues: (i) the use of inappropriately matched control stimuli; (ii) opacity of stimulus selection and validation procedures; (iii) a credence in noisy measures; (iv) a reliance on unreliable tasks; and (v) variability in design and analysis. This is evidenced through a review of alcohol-related attentional bias (64 empirical articles, 68 tasks), which reveals the following: only 53% of tasks use appropriately matched control stimuli; as few as 38% report their stimulus selection and 19% their validation procedures; less than 28% used indices capable of disambiguating attentional processes; 22% assess reliability; and under 2% of studies were pre-registered.

CONCLUSIONS

Well-matched and validated experimental stimuli, the development of reliable cognitive tasks and explicit assessment of their psychometric properties, and careful consideration of behavioural indices and their analysis will improve the methodological rigour of cognitive alcohol research. Open science principles can facilitate replication and reproducibility in alcohol research.

Wake Forest Alcohol Imagery Set: Development and Validation of a Large Standardized Alcohol Imagery Dataset

BACKGROUND

The study of alcohol use frequency utilizes alcohol-related cue imagery. Although a number of alcohol-image databases currently exist, they have several limitations: Many are not publicly available, some use stock images or clip art rather than real photographs, several eliminate any photographs displaying brand information, and predominantly they contain relatively few images. The aim of this project was to develop a large, open-access database of alcohol-related cue images, containing photographs with and without brand information, taken in real-world environments, with images in a variety of orientations and dimensions.

METHODS

The study collected 1,650 images voluntarily from the larger community, to capture photographs with a wide range of content, environments, and relation to alcohol. All images were then rated on scales of valence, arousal, and relation to alcohol by 1,008 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, using classical emotion validation methods based on the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Survey respondents were screened with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and Cronbach's alpha scores were calculated to determine the interrater reliability of scores across the whole sample, and within low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk drinkers for each rating domain. Univariate ANOVAs were run to determine differences in ratings across drinking groups.

RESULTS

All Cronbach's alpha scores indicated high interrater reliability within the whole sample, and across drinking severity groups. Tukey's HSD post hoc results indicated greater arousal and affect in response to image viewing in moderate- and high-risk drinkers, and higher relation-to-alcohol ratings in low-risk drinkers. All images had categorization tags assigned by members of the study team.

CONCLUSIONS

The established imagery set includes 1,650 alcohol-related images, rated on scales of valence, arousal, and relation to alcohol, and categorized by type of alcohol depicted. The imagery database will be available for open-access download and use through Google Photos.

Interactive Effects of Naturalistic Drinking Context and Alcohol Sensitivity on Neural Alcohol Cue-Reactivity Responses

BACKGROUND

Considerable evidence indicates that a low level of subjective response to alcohol's acute effects (i.e., low sensitivity) is associated with enhanced risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Recent work suggests that the highest risk response profile consists of blunted sensitivity to alcohol's sedation-like effects, coupled with enhanced sensitivity to alcohol's stimulation-like effects (i.e., differential sensitivity). A largely separate body of work indicates that enhanced reactivity to alcohol-related cues is associated with increased AUD risk.

AIMS

The current research examined the extent to which variability in alcohol response phenotypes is associated with enhanced P3 event-related potential (ERP) responses to alcohol-related pictures (ACR-P3), and whether this reactivity varies according to depicted drinking contexts.

METHODS

Eighty young adults (aged 18 to 33 years) completed a self-report measure of alcohol sensitivity (the Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire) and viewed images depicting drinking in naturalistic contexts, alcohol and nonalcohol beverages in isolation (devoid of naturalistic drinking context), and neutral nonbeverage control images while ERPs were recorded.

RESULTS

Results indicated that blunted sensitivity to alcohol's sedative-like effects was differentially associated with enhanced ACR-P3 but reduced P3 reactivity to nonalcohol cues. Variation in sensitivity to alcohol's stimulant-like effects was not associated with differential ACR-P3. Contrary to predictions, these effects were not potentiated by drinking contexts.

CONCLUSIONS

The current results replicate and extend previous work linking low alcohol sensitivity with enhanced incentive salience for alcohol-related cues and suggest that cues depicting drinking contexts are less likely to differentiate high-risk from low-risk drinkers.