Adolescent alcohol use is associated with adverse psychosocial outcomes, including an increased risk of alcohol use disorder in adulthood. It is therefore important to identify risk factors of alcohol initiation in adolescence. Research to date has shown that altered neural activation to reward is associated with alcohol use in adolescence; however, few studies have focused on neural activation to loss and alcohol use. The current study examined neural activation to loss and reward among 64 alcohol naive 12−14 year olds that did (n = 20) and did not initiate alcohol use by a three year follow-up period. Results showed that compared to adolescents that did not initiate alcohol use, adolescents that did initiate alcohol use by the three year follow-up period had increased activation to loss in the left striatum (i.e., putamen), right precuneus, and the brainstem/pons when they were alcohol naive at baseline. By contrast, alcohol initiation was not associated with neural activation to winning a reward. These results suggest that increased activation in brain regions implicated in salience, error detection/self-referential processing, and sensorimotor function, especially to negative outcomes, may represent an initial vulnerability factor for alcohol use in adolescence.

青少年饮酒与不良的社会心理结果有关，包括成年后酒精使用障碍的风险增加。因此，确定青春期开始饮酒的危险因素非常重要。迄今为止的研究表明，奖励的神经激活改变与青春期饮酒有关。然而，很少有研究关注对损失和酒精使用的神经激活。目前的研究检查了 64 名未饮酒的 12-14 岁青少年对损失和奖励的神经激活（n= 20) 并且在三年的随访期内没有开始饮酒。结果表明，与未开始饮酒的青少年相比，在三年随访期间开始饮酒的青少年的左侧纹状体（即壳核）、右侧楔前叶和脑干/脑桥的激活减少当他们在基线时酗酒时。相比之下，饮酒与赢得奖励的神经激活无关。这些结果表明，与显着性、错误检测/自我参照处理和感觉运动功能有关的大脑区域的激活增加，尤其是负面结果，可能代表了青春期饮酒的初始脆弱性因素。