Adolescent Alcohol Consumption - It's Effect on Risk-Preference

Effect of adolescent alcohol consumption on risk-preference and neural encoding of risky rewards
2011 Seed Grant
Jamie Roitman, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois at Chicago

Adolescence is a period critical for the development of brain circuitry used to make decisions and evaluate the consequences of choices. This period is frequently marked as a time of increased alcohol consumption- an act that may alter these neural circuits and have long-lasting effects on how one evaluates the outcomes of decisions to guide subsequent behavior. In an animal model, rats that experienced a temporary period of alcohol consumption via ‘jello shot’ in adolescence showed long-term increases in risk-preference during adulthood. Using this model, we will measure how adolescent consumption of alcohol during this developmental period alters adult patterns of activity in individual neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, an area involved in evaluating risk to guide decisions, and the nucleus accumbens, a region important for processing rewards and goal-directed behavior.


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