Premorbid Deviations in Cerebral Cortex: Examining Indicators of Risk for Substance Abuse in a High-Risk Family Study Design

Abstract

Substance use disorder, or SUDs, have been a significant public health concern that links to multiple neurological impairments. Most of the research on SUDs has been done on individuals that have already been exposed to SUDs for a substantial period of time, and hardly examined are the neurological changes in young, substance-naïve children of parents with SUDs, who are at high risk for developing SUDs. In the study covered by this report, a high-risk family study design was used to examine whether children at high familial risk (by virtue of a parent with a SUD) show brain deviations relative to children at low familial risk. Cortical thickness in key brain regions previously mapped to functionally defined networks was measured and compared, but only the cortical thickness in the somatomotor cortex showed significant differences (p < .05). No significant sex interactions were found. These results may point to the possibility that SUD-related brain deviations are more related to substance use rather than premorbid familial liability, but this possibility will need to be examined by further research with larger samples.