Adolescent response to alcohol advertising is of concern, as they are exposed to alcohol-related ads on a daily basis in many countries 60. We 61 have observed that heavy drinking youth show greater brain activation while viewing alcohol advertisements than they do to non-alcohol beverage ads. This substantially greater brain activation to alcoholic beverage pictures was observed throughout the brain, particularly in the prefrontal area, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, posterior cingulate, and temporal lobe, and was prominent in the left hemisphere, limbic, and visual cortices. This suggests that reward, visual attention limbic, appetitive, and episodic memory systems were preferentially invoked in response to alcohol ads relative to non-alcohol ads in heavy drinking teens. Only the inferior frontal gyrus showed more activation in light drinkers during the task, potentially indicating a negative valence to these alcohol stimuli in non-drinking teens. Overall, light drinkers showed more response to non-alcoholic beverage pictures. These findings extend previous studies in adults, and link alcohol advertisement exposure in youth to activation in reward, desire, positive emotion, and episodic recall brain areas 62.
