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Andoh, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Andoh, J..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Multimodal longitudinal prediction of alcohol-use trajectories in adolescents and young adults: Social context, real-life social affective benefit, and fronto-striatal involvement

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.

neuroscience↗

Neurostructural correlates of real-life social drinking risk in alcohol use disorder

The social context of alcohol consumption is increasingly recognized as an important factor in the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, individuals with AUD may differ in how strongly alcohol use by people around them is associated with their own drinking, and the neurostructural basis of this variation remains unclear. Here we studied 83 individuals with AUD (53 men, 30 women; mean [SD] age, 37.20 [12.42] years; median DSM-5 AUD criteria, 4) using six weeks of ecological momentary assessment and structural magnetic resonance imaging (n = 80). Across 5,221 non-solitary observations, greater exposure to surrounding drinkers was associated with increased odds of momentary drinking (odds ratio, 4.23; 95% CI, 3.60-4.97), with significant between-person variation that we quantified as social drinking risk (SDR). Higher SDR was associated with lower gray matter volume in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (T = 5.40; P < .001) and weaker pregenual anterior cingulate cortex-ventral striatum structural covariance (T = 3.15; P = .032). These findings support SDR as an ecologically grounded phenotype linking daily-life social-context sensitivity to cingulostriatal structure, with potential relevance for mechanistic and interventional research in AUD.

neuroscience↗

Phantom limb pain intensity is associated with generalized hyperalgesia

After limb amputation, most amputees suffer from phantom limb pain (PLP). The mechanisms underlying this condition are complex and insufficiently understood. Altered somatosensory sensitivity (either heightened or lowered) might contribute to PLP. Recent studies have tested this assumption but mainly focused on the residual limb. However, altered somatosensation in PLP might be generalized. In this study, we applied quantitative sensory testing to 37 unilateral upper-limb amputees (23 with PLP, 14 without PLP) and 19 healthy controls. We assessed thresholds to heat pain (HPT), pressure pain (PPT), warmth detection (WDT), and two-point discrimination (2PDT) at the residual limb, a homologous point and the thenar of the intact limb, and both corners of the mouth. We did not find significant differences in any of the thresholds between the groups. However, higher PLP intensity was significantly related to lower HPT at all measured body sites except for the residual limb. At the residual limb, lower HPT were observed in more distal amputations and in amputees showing a higher degree of prosthesis use. Although WDT did by itself not significantly correlate with PLP intensity at any of the body sites, multiple regression analysis showed the highest multiple correlations with PLP intensity for a combination of high WDT and low HPT at the corners of the mouth. In this model, the combination of HPT and WDT shared 58% of the variance with PLP intensity. Other factors of potential importance, especially residual limb pain, were not significantly associated to any sensory threshold. We conclude that the intensity, but not the presence of PLP is positively associated with higher heat pain sensitivity. Since this association was observed at various, distributed body sites, we suggest that central mechanisms might be underlying such generalized hyperalgesia.

neuroscience↗