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Dissecting Heterogeneous Neurodevelopment to Drinking Onset in Young Adulthood

Award Number: R01AA032306
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 09/01/2026
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2031

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Dissecting Heterogeneous Neurodevelopment to Drinking Onset in Young Adulthood - Abstract The cost of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is extensive with respect to life achievement, family interaction, and physical and mental health. Critically, serious addiction results only after years of unhealthy alcohol misuse that could be identified and managed years earlier. Thus, understanding the neural underpinnings of drinking in young adults and identifying neural risk factors for early drinking onset can direct future preventive programs thatlower the risk of developing AUD later in life.Much progress in the neurobiology of addiction in adults can be integrated into a conceptual three-stage framework that involves neuroadaptations in three corresponding behavioral-cognitive domains in reward, emotion, and executive control. A major gap in knowledge is that it is still unclear how these domains of neurocircuits unfold imbalance to during adolescence and whether there is a maturational across the domains that leads to drinking onset in young adulthood propose apply a novel data-driven machine learning (ML) analysis to the longitudinal . To close the gap, we neuroimaging, behavioral, and neuropsychological measures of 466 adolescents (baseline age 12-18 years) with 9 years of follow-up examination released by the National (NCANDA). aims exist to Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence All participants were no-to-low drinkers before age 18 years. While the mainstay of research often to identify a universa l set of neural risk factors for forecasting drinking onset , we hypothesize that there multiple subtypes of maturational imbalance anchored in the three behavioral-cognitive domains that lead heavy drinking in young adulthood. Moreover, such developmental heterogeneity can bestratified by sociodemographic constructs and life experiences. To test these principal hypotheses, we will develop a novel self-supervised longitudinal correlation analysis (SLCA) to identify neurocircuits that show co-development with domains of behavioral-cognitive functions. Next, the longitudinal trajectories of the identified neurocircuits will be entered into a multi-instance learning framework to differentiate those who initiated heavy drinking before the legal age of 21 years (N=311) vs those who remained no-to-low drinking (N=155). Post-hoc analyses of the classification results allow for subtyping neurodevelopmental deficits and explaining how the subtypes emerge from individual variability linked to sex, adverse childhood experiences, and family drinking history. Findings of the two aims will be tested for reproducibility in two independent studies: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and the Human Connectome Project Development. Upon the completion of these aims, the proposed ML workflow will provide the most direct neurobiological evidence on the maturational imbalance theory in the context of youth drinking and be the first to identify heterogeneous developmental risk factors for drinking onset in young adulthood, thus laying the groundwork for designing clinically usable neuroimaging- informed riskassessment in the precision psychiatry setting.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $591,468 )
2026	2026	WEILL MEDICAL COLLEGE OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY	575 LEXINGTON AVE FL 9	NEW YORK	NY	10022	NEW YORK	USA	Alcohol Research Programs	000	1	8/13/2026	NEW	$591,468
														Subtotal = $591,468

Grand Total All Awards = $591,468

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Dissecting Heterogeneous Neurodevelopment to Drinking Onset in Young Adulthood

Award Number: R01AA032306

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 09/01/2026

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2031

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