Key References

Jones SA, Del Giacco AC, Barnes SJ, Nagel BJ. Adolescent substance use is associated with altered brain response during processing of negative emotional stimuli. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2023;84(2):257–266. 10.15288/jsad.22-00143.**○ Found that during emotional processing in scared versus calm conditions, greater alcohol use, but not marijuana use, was associated with activation in the middle cingulate cortex.Cohen-Gilbert JE, Sneider JT, Oot EN, Seraikas AM, Schuttenberg EM, Harris SK, et al. Risk for adolescent substance use initiation: associations with large-scale brain network recruitment during emotional inhibitory control. Beh Sci (Basel). 2025;15(10):1407. 10.3390/bs15101407.○ Identified potential neural markers for early substance use in adolescents.Hammond CJ, Ma L, Bjork JM, Gerard Moeller F, Arias AJ. Altered effective connectivity of emotion perception and regulation networks during an emotional face perception task in adults with alcohol use disorder. Brain Struct Funct. 2025;230(7):136. 10.1007/s00429-025-02992-8.○ Identified alterations in effective connectivity in individuals with substance use disorder during an emotional face-matching task.Perini I, Mayo LM, Capusan AJ, Paul ER, Yngve A, Kampe R, et al. Resilience to substance use disorder following childhood maltreatment: association with peripheral biomarkers of endocannabinoid function and neural indices of emotion regulation. Mol Psychiatry. 2023;28(6):2563–71. 10.1038/s41380-023-02033-y.○ Found that individuals who did not develop substance use disorder following childhood maltreatment presented higher engagement in emotion regulation and salience regions compared to those that did develop substance use disorder during an emotional interference task.Chaplin TM, Curby TW, Gonçalves SF, Kisner MA, Niehaus CE, Thompson JC. Sex differences in emotion- and reward-related neural responses predicting increases in substance use in adolescence. Behav Brain Res. 2023;450:114499. 10.1016/j.bbr.2023.114499.○ **Found that among adolescent girls with initiated substance use, heightened activation in the right amygdala to negative emotional stimuli longitudinally predicted growth in substance use frequency.