AbstractAimThe current study aimed to examine the longitudinal effects of standard binge drinking (4+/5+ drinks for females/males in 2 hours) and extreme binge drinking (8+/10+ drinks for females/males in 2 hours) on resting state functional connectivity.Method119 college students with distinct alcohol bingeing patterns (35 non-bingeing controls, 44 standard bingers, and 40 extreme bingers) were recruited to ensure variability in bingeing frequency. Resting state fMRI scans were obtained at time 1 when participants were college freshmen and sophomores and again approximately two years later. On four occasions during the 2-year period between scans, participants reported monthly standard and extreme binge drinking for the past 6 months. Association between bingeing and change in functional connectivity was studied using both network-level and edge-level analysis. Network connectivity was calculated by aggregating multiple edges (a functional connection between any two brain regions) affiliated with the same network. The network-level analysis used mixed-effects models to assess the association between standard/extreme binge drinking and change in network connectivity, focusing on canonical networks often implicated in substance misuse. On the other hand, the edge-level analysis tested the relationship between bingeing and change in whole-brain connectivity edges using connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM).ResultsFor network-level analysis, higher standard bingeing was associated with a decrease in connectivity between Default Mode Network-Ventral Attention Network (DMN-VAN) from time 1 to time 2, controlling for the initial binge groups at time 1, longitudinal network changes, in-scanner motion and other demographic covariates. For edge-level analysis, the CPM failed to identify a generalizable predictive model of cumulative standard/extreme bingeing from change in connectivity edges.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that binge drinking is associated with abnormality in networks implicated in attention allocation and self-focused processes, which, in turn, have been implicated in rumination, craving, and relapse. More extensive alterations in functional connectivity might be observed with heavier or longer binge drinking pattern.
Binge drinking is associated with altered resting state functional connectivity of reward-salience and top down control networks