Family history of AUD may also be a risk factor for alterations in brain volume in adolescence. In the hippocampus, male FHP adolescents had larger left hippocampal volume than FHN males, an effect not significant for females or in the right hippocampus (Hanson et al., 2010). A trend showed that males overall tended to have smaller hippocampal volume than females (Hanson et al., 2010). Hippocampal volume was not predictive of alcohol use at follow-up (Hanson et al., 2010). Another study found a positive association between left nucleus accumbens volume and FHP in adolescent females only (R2=0.11, p=0.006 in females vs. R2=0.005, p=0.53 in males) (Cservenka, Gillespie, Michael, & Nagel, 2015). Findings suggest that risk factors for AUD, such as FHP, may be related to alterations in hippocampal and nucleus accumbens volume during a peak time in neurodevelopment for male and female adolescents. However, a recent study found no evidence of a SG by family history interaction for regional volumes in hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus in young adults even after controlling for recent alcohol use (McPhee et al., 2018).
