Decreased event-related theta power and phase-synchrony in young binge drinkers during target detection: An anatomically-constrained MEG approach

Background: The prevalence of binge drinking has risen in recent years. It is associated with a range of neurocognitive deficits among adolescents
and young emerging adults who are especially vulnerable to alcohol use. Attention is an essential dimension of executive functioning and attentional
disturbances may be associated with hazardous drinking. The aim of the study was to examine the oscillatory neural dynamics of attentional control
during visual target detection in emerging young adults as a function of binge drinking.
Method: In total, 51 first-year university students (18 ± 0.6 years) were assigned to light drinking (n = 26), and binge drinking (n = 25) groups
based on their alcohol consumption patterns. A high-density magnetoencephalography signal was combined with structural magnetic resonance
imaging in an anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography model to estimate event-related source power in a theta (4–7 Hz) frequency band.
Phase-locked co-oscillations were further estimated between the principally activated regions during task performance.
Results: Overall, the greatest event-related theta power was elicited by targets in the right inferior frontal cortex and it correlated with performance
accuracy and selective attention scores. Binge drinkers exhibited lower theta power and dysregulated oscillatory synchrony to targets in the right
inferior frontal cortex, which correlated with higher levels of alcohol consumption.
Conclusions: These results confirm that a highly interactive network in the right inferior frontal cortex subserves attentional control, revealing
the importance of theta oscillations and neural synchrony for attentional capture and contextual maintenance. Attenuation of theta power and
synchronous interactions in binge drinkers may indicate early stages of suboptimal integrative processing in young, highly functioning binge drinkers
Study was supported by the projects SPI/2010/134 and SPI/2010/051 from the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Politics (National Plan of Drugs), and the National Institutes of Health, (R01-AA016624). Eduardo López-Caneda was supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology SFRH/BPD/109750/2015