Several lines of evidence from gene x environment interaction (GxE) studies have shown that genetic risk factors moderate the associations of traumatic exposures with alcohol use behaviors. The current study supports and extends this research in demonstrating that polygenic risk for problematic alcohol use amplifies the association of COVID-19-related stressors (family death or illness) and increases in drunkenness and protective factors (relationship quality) with decreases in drunkenness among remitted individuals of European ancestry. These findings may be limited given the current methodological challenges applying genetic findings resulting from discovery samples of largely European ancestry to diverse populations, such as COGA’s lifespan study. While research examining the influence of interactions between neural risk factors and traumatic stress on substance use behaviors is less common, our prior research in COGA has demonstrated that neurophysiological and neurocognitive risk factors also amplify the association of traumatic stress on alcohol use behaviors [35, 65]. The current study extends this work by suggesting that low interhemispheric alpha EEG coherence amplifies the association of COVID-19-related stress (family death or illness, media consumption, and economic hardships) with increases
