Binge Drinking, Depression, and Neurocognitive Processes in Emerging Adults

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Abstract

Binge drinking and depression are two common problems affecting emerging adults. To date, minimal research exists on individuals with co-occurring binge drinking and depression, though comorbidity is associated with cognitive impairments (Hermens et al., 2013). Depression and binge drinking have also been shown to interact to predict ERP measures involved in cognitive processing (Connell, Danzo, & Dawson, 2018). Research on the comorbidity of these two conditions may have important implications for etiological models as well as treatment.

This study aims to use EEG methods to study emotion processing alterations in relation to comorbid depression and binge drinking in a sample of undergraduate students. Based on responses to to depression and alcohol use questionnaires, participants will be placed into four groups: those endorsing both clinically significant depressive symptoms as well as binge drinking engagement, those endorsing low levels of depression and no binge drinking engagement, those endorsing depression and no binge drinking engagement, and those not endorsing depression but engaging in binge drinking. We will utilize the affective startle picture viewing paradigm, in which individuals view a set of neutral or emotionally valenced pictures and at times hear an unexpected loud acoustic startle probe stimulus. The startle response is a reflexive fear reaction that occurs in response to hearing an unexpected acoustic burst of white noise that yields both an EMG eyeblink response as well ERP responses.

The startle P3 is a positive ERP wave thought to index the amount of cognitive resources utilized in processing an image. Since attention is a limited resource in the brain, an individual allocating more resources to a picture will have fewer resources remaining to respond to the burst of sound, yielding a lower P3 wave. Individuals dedicating fewer resources to a picture will likewise have greater cognitive resources available to respond to the acoustic probe, yielding a P3 wave of higher amplitude (Schupp, Cuthbert, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 1997). Broadly, this study aims to examine whether groups defined by binge-drinking and depression will exhibit differential patterns of engagement with affective or alcohol-related images. This study aims to examine how students with comorbid binge drinking and depression will respond to the images of alcohol in the emotion-modulated startle task.

Preliminary data analysis will identify possible differences among these groups, specifically investigating differences in demographic factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, depression levels, and alcohol use. The primary analyses will be two repeated measure ANOVAs examining image-type (4-levels: neutral, positive, negative, or alcohol-related) x binge-drinking (2-levels: binge-drinking, non binge-drinking) x depression (2-levels: high depression, low depression) effects on both the startle P3 amplitude and the EMG eyeblink response. Covariates such as gender, anxiety symptoms, and marijuana use will also be examined to better ensure results obtained are due to effects of depression and alcohol rather than other confounding variables. Data collection has been completed and we are currently in the process of analyzing the data. Analyses will be conducted before 2021 to ensure that the results are finalized in time to be presented at the SRCD Biennial Meeting.

Authors

• Liliana Varman, Case Western Reserve University
  Presenting Author

• Arin M Connell, Case Western Reserve University
  Non-Presenting Author