Autonomic Nervous System Responses to Stress and Emergence of Substance Use in Adolescents

• In Event: Developmental psychophysiology and developmental psychopathology: Temporal and contextual considerations

Abstract

Substance use increases across adolescence, and early substance use increases risk for substance use disorders in adulthood (Johnston et al., 2019; Latimer & Zur, 2010). Adolescents who struggle to self-regulate following stress may be inclined to use substances to reduce distress (Wills et al., 1999). The two branches of the autonomic nervous system—the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)—are related stress-response systems, as SNS activity generally increases and PNS activity generally decreases during stress. These systems may relate to substance use risk, as dampened SNS and PNS activity and low cross-system reciprocity (e.g., relatively low sympathetic dominance during stress) have been linked with poor mental health in youth (Graziano & Derefinko, 2014; Quigley & Moore, 2018). The present study examined whether 14-year-old adolescents with dampened SNS and PNS responses to social-evaluative stress and lower cross-system reciprocity reported that they had initiated use of more substances by age 14 and two years later by age 16.
Participants were Mexican-origin youth from the Salinas Valley, an agricultural area in California, and were recruited as part of the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) study (N = 277; 45.85% female). Youth completed a modified Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a social-evaluative stress test, in which they presented a speech and completed mental math for two confederate judges (Johnson et al., 2017). PNS and SNS activity were collected using spot electrodes in an impedance and electrocardiogram configuration continuously throughout the protocol as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP) using Mindware.
Participants reported whether they had ever drunk alcohol, used marijuana, smoked cigarettes, or vaped nicotine in their lifetime at age 14 and again at age 16. The TSST was separated into five segments, each approximately 5 min long: baseline, speech preparation, speech, math, debriefing (Figure 1). Three-level multilevel models—with each minute nested within a segment, nested within the adolescent—assessed whether autonomic responses varied with number of substances ever used, controlling for sex, poverty-status, and grade. Separate models predicted RSA and PEP from task segment X substance use interactions to test whether stress responses differed by the number of substances that adolescents had ever used. Finally, models tested whether substance use was related to cardiac autonomic balance—the sum of z-standardized RSA and PEP—as an index of cross-system reciprocity, in line with Berntson and colleagues (2008).
Whereas substance use at age 14 was not related to autonomic responses, adolescents who showed dampened PNS reactivity to the social-evaluative tasks had initiated use of more substances by age 16; B = 0.06, SE = 0.03, p = .043 for the speech, B = 0.09, SE = 0.03, p = .001 for the math task (Figure 2). Further, lower cross-system reciprocity during the task was associated with initiation of use of more substances by age 16 (B = 0.15, SE = 0.06, p = .018). Taken together, results suggest that specific alterations in autonomic responses to stress may impose risk for early substance use.

Authors

• Danny Rahal, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Andrew J Fuligni, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abbey Alkon, University of California - San Francisco
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan Johnson, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff, Iowa State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nancy A Gonzales, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ron E Dahl, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katherine Kogut, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brenda Eskenazi, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julianna Deardorff, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author