Multimodal longitudinal prediction of alcohol-use trajectories in adolescents and young adults: Social context, real-life social affective benefit, and fronto-striatal involvement
- 1Central Institute of Mental Health, Heidelberg University
Abstract
Escalating alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood confers substantial risk for later substance misuse and adverse mental health outcomes, yet the factors that determine early drinking trajectories remain poorly understood. Here, we examined alcohol use across social, affective, and neural domains in a cohort of 378 community-based young drinkers using a combination of longitudinal phenotyping, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and functional neuroimaging. Across different levels of analysis, higher baseline alcohol consumption (standard drinks per week) was associated with immediate substance-use social context, greater social-affective benefit in daily life, and heightened engagement of the fronto-striatal reward circuitry. In a one-year longitudinal follow-up, individual social-affective benefit and substance-related social environmental factors showed the strongest predictive value for drinking trajectories in a follow-up of 219 individuals after one year. Our findings identify key social and neural reward-related determinants of youth drinking behavior, informing the development of evidence-based risk detection and prevention measures.
Related
- Machine learning prediction of 1-year thrombosis risk in membranous nephropathy: integration of renal pathology and early longitudinal trajectories
- Palmatine as a topical candidate for psoriasis targeting LCK to inhibit NF-κB signaling with computational prediction of Wnt pathway involvement
- High definition longitudinal spatial atlas of psoriasis reveals SPRR2F+ keratinocytes and distinct tissue-resolution trajectories under IL-17 and IL-23 inhibition
- Multimodal cellular context enables molecular phenotyping from single-molecule trajectories
- Hindbrain explants enable multimodal and longitudinal analysis of the developing olivo-cerebellar circuit at single-cell resolution
BibTeX
@misc{berhe2026multimodal,
title = {{Multimodal longitudinal prediction of alcohol-use trajectories in adolescents and young adults: Social context, real-life social affective benefit, and fronto-striatal involvement}},
author = {O. Berhe and G. Gan and J. Andoh and A. Ghadami and M. Reichert and U. W. Ebner-Priemer and C. Heim and F. Kiefer and A. Meyer-Lindenberg and H. Tost},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.28.762013},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762013v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Multimodal longitudinal prediction of alcohol-use trajectories in adolescents and young adults: Social context, real-life social affective benefit, and fronto-striatal involvement
AU - O. Berhe
AU - G. Gan
AU - J. Andoh
AU - A. Ghadami
AU - M. Reichert
AU - U. W. Ebner-Priemer
AU - C. Heim
AU - F. Kiefer
AU - A. Meyer-Lindenberg
AU - H. Tost
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.28.762013
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.28.762013v1
AB - Escalating alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood confers substantial risk for later substance misuse and adverse mental health outcomes, yet the factors that determine early drinking trajectories remain poorly understood. Here, we examined alcohol use across social, affective, and neural domains in a cohort of 378 community-based young drinkers using a combination of longitudinal phenotyping, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and functional neuroimaging. Across different levels of analysis, higher baseline alcohol consumption (standard drinks per week) was associated with immediate substance-use social context, greater social-affective benefit in daily life, and heightened engagement of the fronto-striatal reward circuitry. In a one-year longitudinal follow-up, individual social-affective benefit and substance-related social environmental factors showed the strongest predictive value for drinking trajectories in a follow-up of 219 individuals after one year. Our findings identify key social and neural reward-related determinants of youth drinking behavior, informing the development of evidence-based risk detection and prevention measures.
ER -