The data for the current analyses utilized 240 baseline placebo and alcohol fMRI sessions with 120 drinking but not alcohol dependent young adults, which had been collected ~5 years previously, to determine whether fMRI BOLD contrasts predicted follow-up drinking-related patterns. The baseline analyses (Paulus et al., 2012) were consistent with prior investigations (Paulus et al., 2006; Tapert et al., 2004) where individuals with low LR tended to demonstrate greater fMRI BOLD response contrasts during cognitive or emotional-based tests with placebo compared to alcohol, while high LR subjects showed the opposite pattern, with no task performance differences across LR groups. The current work examines whether the neural activation to affective tasks as a function of LR status predicted drinking outcomes, and, if so, if the fMRI results added to LR in those predictions. The answer to both these questions was affirmative, although the small sample requires that these results be considered preliminary.
