Reward System Activation in Response to Alcohol Advertisements Predicts College Drinking

Abstract

Objective: In this study, we assess whether activation of the brain's reward system in response to alcohol advertisements is associated with college drinking. Previous research has established a relationship between exposure to alcohol marketing and underage drinking. Within other appetitive domains, the relationship between cue exposure and behavioral enactment is known to rely on activation of the brain's reward system. However, the relationship between neural activation to alcohol advertisements and alcohol consumption has not been studied in a nondisordered population.

Method: In this cross-sectional study, 53 college students (32 women) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan while viewing alcohol, food, and control (car and technology) advertisements. Afterward, they completed a survey about their alcohol consumption (including frequency of drinking, typical number of drinks consumed, and frequency of binge drinking) over the previous month.

Results: In 43 participants (24 women) meeting inclusion criteria, viewing alcohol advertisements elicited activation in the left orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral ventral striatum-regions of the reward system that typically activate to other appetitive rewards and relate to consumption behaviors. Moreover, the level of self-reported drinking correlated with the magnitude of activation in the left orbitofrontal cortex.

Conclusions: Results suggest that alcohol cues are processed within the reward system in a way that may motivate drinking behavior.

Figure 1.

Representation of the alcohol cue-reactivity paradigm: 336 advertisements from four conditions (alcohol, food, cars, and technology) were presented for 2.5 seconds and were jittered with 30% fixation (0–10 seconds) for an estimation of baseline. Participants made indoor/outdoor judgments for each image using a button-box.

Figure 2.

Histograms of response frequencies to each item in the drinking survey. Median responses are denoted with a vertical line (frequency of drinking: Mdn = 2 [“two to four times in the previous month”], interquartile range [IQR] = 1; typical number of drinks on days when drinking: Mdn = 2 [“three or four drinks”], IQR = 1.5; binge drinking: Mdn = 1 [“once in the previous month”], IQR = 2).

Figure 3.

A. Brain regions activating to ALCOHOL > CONTROL advertisements. Whole-brain activations (p < .01, 600 contiguous voxels) from the ALCOHOL > CONTROL contrast are depicted on an inflated cortical surface (Marcus et al., 2011). Greater activation for ALCOHOL advertisements was observed in the left fusiform cortex, right inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area. B. Signal change in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) region of interest defined from the whole-brain ALCOHOL > CONTROL contrast correlated with alcohol consumption (0–13), r(41) = 0.37, p = .02—the left and right ventral striatum (VS) did not: left VS: r(41) = 0.17, p = .29; right VS: r(41) = 0.28, p = .07.

Figure 4.

Whole-brain activations (p < .01, 327 contiguous voxels) from the ALCOHOL > CONTROL contrast covaried with alcohol consumption. Activations were observed in the left temporal lobe, occipital cortex, and cingulate cortex.