Relatedly, we found that across analyses the association between stress and both problem drinking and AUD diagnosis was stronger for those with the low VS-high amygdala phenotype relative to the opposite phenotype. This may reflect our focus on problem drinking specifically occurring in the context of recent stress, which is particularly important in our population of young adult university students.53 Thus, our analytic strategy may have been particularly well-suited for the discovery of risk factors predisposing to relief drinking or perhaps even neural phenotypes associated with a broader vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology. Consistent with the latter, a prior study has shown that a combination of relatively high amygdala reactivity and relatively low VS reactivity, but not the opposite combination, may be a risk factor for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).54
