Close relationships with parents promote healthier brain development in high-risk teens, buffering alcohol use disorder

Resume: Close and supportive parental relationships may help mitigate the genetic and environmental risk of developing alcohol use disorder in at-risk adolescents.

Font: State University of New York

For teens at elevated risk of developing alcohol use disorder (AUD), close relationships with parents may help mitigate their genetic and environmental vulnerability, a new study suggests.

Children of people with AUD are four times more likely than others to develop the disorder. Mounting evidence suggests that this heritable risk may be amplified or mitigated by the quality of parenting.

Poor parenting has been linked to a variety of negative behavioral and psychiatric outcomes, while positive parenting appears critical to the development of higher-level social, emotional, and cognitive traits.

Typical neurological development during adolescence hones self-regulatory abilities and executive functions (eg, attention, inhibition, and decision-making), allowing adaptive responses to challenging situations. Deficits in these abilities underlie the risk of developing substance use disorders.

Research has established that individuals with AUD and their children, during cognitive tasks, display low activity in two measures of measurable brain responses.

These, known as P3 and frontal theta (FT), are important in self-regulation and executive function. Low P3 and FT levels predict the development of AUD and can be conceptualized as a “neurological developmental delay”. Little is known about the potential for positive parenting, especially by parents, to buffer this outcome in adolescents at high risk of developing AUD.

For the study in Alcoholism: clinical and experimental researchthe researchers explored associations between vulnerable youth’s P3, FT, risky alcohol use, and closeness to their mothers and fathers during adolescence.

Between 2004 and 2019, the researchers recruited 1,256 young sons, ages 12 to 22 at baseline, from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA), a large multigenerational family study of the genetic and environmental influences that drive AUD.

These offspring were interviewed and their brain function was assessed twice a year. The interviews covered substance use, mental health, and aspects of the participants’ home environments, including closeness to their mothers and fathers between the ages of 12 and 17. Their P3 and FT responses were measured using a visual task.

The researchers also collected data on participants’ binge drinking, impulsivity (a personality trait known to affect drinking problems and relationships with parents), demographic characteristics, and alcohol use and parental substances. They used statistical analyzes to explore associations between these factors.

Overall, greater closeness to fathers was associated with stronger P3 and FT activity in offspring, while closeness to mothers was associated with fewer binge drinking. Certain sex differences also emerged.

Closeness to parents was associated with a larger P3 in sons, but not in daughters; closeness to mothers was linked to less binge drinking among daughters, but not among sons.

This may reflect different roles of fathers and mothers in the development of children and adolescents, and differential upbringing of boys versus girls. The findings were independent of other risk factors, including parental AUD, substance use problems, socioeconomic status, and children’s impulsivity.

The study provides compelling evidence that warm and close relationships with parents during adolescence can help build resilience to alcohol problems in children adversely affected by familial AUD and that this, in part, reflects better neurocognitive functioning. Aspects of parenting that affect children’s AUD risk include, and go beyond, alcohol use behaviors.

The researchers conclude that close ties to parents during the key transitional period of adolescence can substantially attenuate children’s tendency toward risky behaviors and addictive disorders, with significant gender differences.

See also

About this research news on neurodevelopment, parenting and AUD

Author: Gayatri Pandey
Font: State University of New York
Contact: Gayathri Pandey – State University of New York
Picture: The image is in the public domain.

original research: closed access.
“Parent-adolescent closeness associations with P3 amplitude, frontal theta, and binge drinking among children at high risk for alcohol use disorder” by Gayathri Pandey et al. Alcoholism: clinical and experimental research

Resume

Parent-adolescent closeness associations with P3 amplitude, frontal theta, and binge drinking among children at high risk for alcohol use disorder

Bottom

Parents affect their children’s brain development, neurocognitive function, risk, and resilience for alcohol use disorder (AUD) through genetic and socioenvironmental factors. Individuals with AUD and their unaffected children manifest low parietal P3 amplitude and low frontal theta power (FT), reflecting heritable neurocognitive deficits associated with AUD. Also, children who experience poor parenting tend to have atypical brain development and higher rates of alcohol problems. Rather, positive parenting can be protective and critical to the normative development of self-regulation, neurocognitive functioning, and the neurobiological systems that support them. However, the role of positive parenting in AUD resilience is poorly studied and its association with neurocognitive functioning and behavioral vulnerability to AUD among high-risk children is less well understood. Using data from the prospective cohort of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (north = 1256, mean age [SD] = 19.25 [1.88]), we investigated associations of closeness to mother and father during adolescence with children’s P3 amplitude, FT power, and binge drinking among high-risk children.

methods

Self-reported closeness to mother and father between the ages of 12 and 17 and binge drinking were assessed using the Semi-Structured Assessment for Genetics of Alcoholism. P3 amplitude and FT power were assessed in response to target stimuli using a Visual Oddball task.

Results

Multivariate multiple regression analyzes showed that closeness to the father was associated with greater P3 amplitude (p = 0.002) and higher FT power (p = 0.01). Closeness to mother was associated with less binge drinking (p = 0.003). Among sons, closeness to father was associated with greater P3 amplitude, but among daughters, closeness to mother was associated with less binge drinking. These associations remained statistically significant with both father’s and mother’s AUD symptoms, socioeconomic status, and children’s impulsivity in the model.

conclusions

Among high-risk offspring, closeness to parents during adolescence may promote resilience to develop AUD and related neurocognitive deficits, albeit with important sex differences.