To evaluate whether the low VS-high amygdala risk profile is associated with drinking to reduce negative emotion, we tested a moderated mediation model with combined anxious and depressive symptomatology (sum of MASQ GDD, GDA and AA scores) as a mediator between LESS and AUDIT, and the interaction effects of VS activity and amygdala reactivity as moderators of the path between mediator and outcome (Figure 3). To ensure the results were not driven by changes in positive emotion, we removed items tapping into hedonic processing (i.e., MASQ AD scale) from our measure of depression and anxiety and included them as an independent covariate. This resulted in an acceptable model fit (χ2=38.243, df=9, p <0.001; RMSEA=0.065, CFI=0.925). Furthermore, within this model stress was strongly positively correlated with anxious and depressive symptomatology (b=0.0448, SE: 0.0079, p<0.001), which in turn mediated the relation between LESS and AUDIT scores for those individuals with relatively low VS activity and high amygdala reactivity (parameter estimate=0.1468, SE: 0.0621, 95% CI: 0.0423–0.2885), but not for those with the opposite neural risk phenotype (parameter estimate=0.1187, SE: 0.0694, 95% CI: −0.0019–0.2763,
