ArticlePsychological medicine2018
Problematic alcohol use and hippocampal volume in a female sample: disentangling cause from consequence using a co-twin control study design.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Shared genetic effects among schizophrenia, substance use disorder, and hippocampal volume in a multiplex extended pedigree sample.Schizophrenia research · 2026Article
- Measuring the Associations Between Brain Morphometry and Polygenic Risk Scores for Substance use Disorders in Drug-Naive Adolescents.Behavior genetics · 2025Article
- Dual-color miniscope imaging of microvessels and neuronal activity in the hippocampus CA1 region of freely moving mice following alcohol administration.American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology · 2023Article
- Alcohol use and grey matter structure: Disentangling predispositional and causal contributions in human studies.Addiction biology · 2023Review
- Testing the consequences of alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine use on hippocampal volume: a quasi-experimental cotwin control analysis of young adult twins.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- A co-twin-control analysis of adolescent and young adult drinking effects on learning and memory.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2021Observational
- The Effects of Alcohol and Cannabis Use on the Cortical Thickness of Cognitive Control and Salience Brain Networks in Emerging Adulthood: A Co-twin Control Study.Biological psychiatry · 2021Article
- Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research.Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies · 2019Article
- Sibling Comparison Designs: Addressing Confounding Bias with Inclusion of Measured Confounders.Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies · 2019Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough there is extensive evidence that problematic alcohol use is associated with smaller hippocampal volume, the typical cross-sectional study design cannot determine whether hippocampal deviations reflect pre-existing liability toward problematic alcohol use or instead reflect an alcohol exposure-related effect. We used the co-twin control study design, which capitalizes upon differences within a twin pair in levels of drinking, to differentiate pre-existing liability from an effect of alcohol exposure.
methodsThe sample included 100 female twins, prospectively assessed from ages 11 to 24. Problematic alcohol use was assessed dimensionally and included indicators of quantity, frequency, and density of alcohol use and intoxication. Hippocampal volume was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging.
resultsProblematic alcohol use (proximal and cumulative) was associated with significantly smaller left and right hippocampal volume. Follow-up co-twin control analyses that partitioned individual-level alcohol effects into pre-existing, familial liability and non-shared alcohol exposure-related effects indicated that this association reflected alcohol exposure. Greater alcohol using twins had smaller hippocampal volume relative to lesser alcohol using co-twins, beyond effects of their shared genetic and environmental liability toward problematic alcohol use. Results held accounting for recent alcohol use, other substance use, externalizing and internalizing psychopathology, personality traits, trauma exposure, and menstrual phase.
conclusionsThe association between problematic alcohol use and smaller hippocampal volume likely reflects an alcohol exposure-related effect. Differentiating pre-existing brain deviations that confer risk for problematic alcohol use from those that reflect effects of alcohol on the brain will inform etiological models of addiction and further prevention and intervention efforts.
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