$3.1M NIH Award Supports Study of Anxiety-Fueled Alcohol Misuse

Neuroimaging, Computational Tools Focus on Racially and Age-Diverse Participants From Nearby Areas

Motivations for alcohol misuse evolve as people age, from a university student bonding with peers or chasing a high to roughly half of middle-aged adults reporting they sometimes drink for relief from stress. Now a University of Maryland psychology researcher is delving into the factors governing anxiety-fueled drinking with support from a new five-year, $3.1 million award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Led by Alexander Shackman, an associate professor of psychology, the study will use a combination of brain imaging tools and data gathered via smartphone surveys to clarify the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning anxiety-fueled alcohol misuse in a racially diverse sample of participants recruited from the Washington-Baltimore region.

Social anxiety is a strong predictor of developing alcohol use disorder, but how this dynamic plays out in daily life is not fully understood, said Shackman.

“The new grant from NIAAA will allow us to study the neural circuits that orchestrate states of fear and anxiety in the lab and the everyday experiences of heavy drinkers as they navigate their daily lives,” he said. “Fusing the brain imaging and smartphone data streams will enable us to test the relevance of the brain circuits we identify in the scanner to stress- and relief-motivated drinking in the real world.”

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Published on Wed, Jul 26, 2023 - 10:24AM