Neurodevelopmental Correlates of Substance Use and Abuse in Adolescence

Dear Colleagues,

Neurodevelopmental trajectories across adolescence contribute to a heightened risk for substance use during this critical developmental period. Of particular relevance is the relative developmental timing and ‘imbalance’ of limbic and prefrontal circuits. Specifically, limbic circuits appear to mature earlier and may, by mediating “bottom-up” affective processes, drive risky behavior. Conversely, prefrontal cortical systems contributing to executive control processes and “top-down” behavioral regulation of risky and reward-seeking behaviors show a more protracted developmental course. In addition to these neural antecedents for substance use, the adolescent brain appears to be especially vulnerable to the consequences of drug and alcohol use.  Indeed, substance use in adolescence has been associated with detrimental alterations of brain structure, function, and connectivity.  While investigations of the neural precursors and consequences of adolescent substance use have largely focused on cross-sectional and retrospective studies, recent advances have included a number of prospective longitudinal investigations and those which include a true substance use naïve baseline sample.  Such approaches may be well placed to more fully elucidate and disentangle the neurodevelopmental correlates of the risk for and experience of substance use in adolescence.  These studies also have the potential to facilitate explorations of the relevance of the timing and escalation of substance use, both of which may be important in the magnitude of the impacts of adolescent substance use on brain development and the risk for later substance abuse and dependence.

This Special Issue will address these compelling issues—i.e., the neural antecedents and consequences of adolescent substance use, the relevance of timing and escalation of use, and later risk for substance use disorders—through a selection of papers representing methodological advances in the field, novel perspectives, and reviews of the extant literature.

Manuscripts that focus on the following cutting-edge research approaches are especially encouraged:

Brain-predicted age, machine learning/neural representations, multimodal, computational modeling, ecological momentary assessment, prospective studies of brain development and substance use, functional and structural connectome, precision functional mapping, graph theory metrics, leveraging big datasets (e.g., IMAGEN, ENIGMA, ABCD), dynamic/brain state and directed functional connectivity.

We are soliciting original research papers, brief reports, reviews & meta-analyses, and perspectives.

Prof. Emma Rose
Dr. Giorgia Picci
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Brain Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Neuroimaging
• brain imaging
• substance use
• substance abuse
• adolescence
• adolescent
• MRI
• EEG
• DTI
• MEG