Whole-brain discovery analyses in DNS revealed that greater alcohol consumption is associated with lower GMV across 8 clusters (Figure 1, Table 1) that encompass regions identified in prior studies of unselected samples (5,17) and among individuals with alcohol use disorder (4,6). The associations with 2 of these clusters (right insula, right middle and superior frontal gyri) replicated within an ROI analysis in the HCP (Figure 1, Table 1). Post hoc analyses revealed that effect sizes were nearly identical in the 2 samples, that results were equivalent when excluding nondrinkers (Figure S2 in Supplement 1), and that associations between alcohol use and GMV remained largely unchanged and significant when correcting for tobacco and cannabis use (Table S11 in Supplement 1). Statistics are presented in the table and figure legends.
