Offspring of parents with substance use disorders (SUD) discount future rewards at a steeper rate on the monetary delay discounting task (DD) than typically developing youth. However, brain activation during DD has yet to be studied in drug naïve youth with a family history (FH) of SUD. Here, we investigate brain activation differences in high-risk youth during DD. We recruited substance naïve youth, aged 11–12, into three groups to compare brain activation during DD: (1) High-risk youth (n = 35) with a FH of SUD and externalizing psychiatric disorders, (2) psychiatric controls (n = 25) who had no FH of SUD, but with equivalent externalizing psychiatric disorders as high-risk youth, and (3) a healthy control group (n = 24) with no FH of SUD and minimal psychopathology. A whole-brain voxel wise analysis of the [Delay > Baseline], [Immediate > Baseline], and [Control > Baseline] contrasts identified functional regions of interest, from which extracted parameter estimates were tested for significant group differences. Relative to control youth, high-risk youth showed stronger activation in the left posterior insula and thalamus when making delayed choices, and stronger activation of the parahippocampal gyrus when making both delayed and control choices (ps < 0.05). Activation in the left posterior insula negatively correlated with both subscales of the Emotion Regulation Checklist, and positively correlated with the Stroop interference effect (ps < 0.05). Our findings suggest possible heritable SUD risk neural markers that distinguish drug naïve high-risk youth from psychiatric and healthy controls.

患有物质使用障碍 (SUD) 的父母的后代在货币延迟贴现任务 (DD) 中以比正常发育中的青少年更陡峭的速度贴现未来奖励。然而，DD 期间的大脑激活尚未在具有 SUD 家族史 (FH) 的未吸毒青年中进行研究。在这里，我们调查了 DD 期间高危青年的大脑激活差异。 我们将 11-12 岁的未接触过物质的青年分为三组，以比较 DD 期间的大脑激活：(1)具有 SUD FH 和外化精神障碍的高危青年 ( n = 35)，(2) 精神控制组 ( n  = 25) 没有 SUD 的 FH，但具有与高危青年相当的外化精神障碍，以及 (3) 健康对照组 ( n = 24) 没有 SUD 的 FH 和最小的精神病理学。[延迟 > 基线]、[立即 > 基线] 和 [控制 > 基线] 对比的全脑体素明智分析确定了感兴趣的功能区域，从中提取的参数估计值被测试是否存在显着的组差异。相对于对照青少年，高风险青少年在做出延迟选择时表现出更强的左后脑岛和丘脑激活，以及在做出延迟和控制选择时更强的海马旁回激活（p < 0.05 ）。左后脑岛的激活与情绪调节清单的两个分量表均呈负相关，并与 Stroop 干扰效应呈正相关（p小号 < 0.05）。我们的研究结果表明，可能存在可遗传的 SUD 风险神经标记，可将未吸毒的高危青年与精神病和健康对照区分开来。