Brain areas related to cognition and affective processing may also be affected by early alcohol use in adolescence. In adolescent binge drinkers or those with adolescent-onset AUD, boys had greater frontal activation in response to a spatial working memory task compared to same-sex controls (Cohen’s d=0.6), whereas girls who were binge drinkers or had adolescent-onset AUD showed less frontal activation to a spatial working memory task compared to same-sex controls (Cohen’s d=1.2) (Squeglia, Schweinsburg, Pulido, & Tapert, 2011), suggesting that the magnitude of differences was greater for girls than boys. For binge-drinking girls, poorer cognitive performance was associated with less frontal activation (Squeglia et al., 2011). A longitudinal fMRI study of adolescent males and females with a family history of AUD (age range: 8.5 to 17.6 years; 3-4 scans per participant) demonstrated that males showed decreased activation in amygdala and precentral gyrus with age in response to negative vs. neutral words on an affective word task (Hardee et al., 2017). Adolescent females showed persistent activation in the amygdala and precentral gyrus with age in response to negative vs. neutral words
