Finally, because of prior evidence indicating a relationship between binge drinking in young adulthood and high fast beta EEG,23 we determined whether the top SNP meeting genome-wide criteria for fast beta EEG was associated with a measure similar to binge drinking, heavy-episodic drinking (frequency of consuming 5+ drinks within 24 h in the past year), in adolescent and young adult offspring from COGA families in COGA’s prospective study. This sample (ages 12–24 years at baseline) is longitudinally followed and has been described in detail previously.47 The present study utilizes data from the baseline assessment of each AA individual (Table 1). Participants were asked to “Think about the last 12 months. How often did you have 5 or more drinks in a 24-hour-period?” Thirteen response options, detailed in Supplementary Table S3, ranged from ‘Never’ to ‘Every Day’. Of the 892 individuals from 212 families, 33.8% had ever consumed a full drink of alcohol. The remaining 66.2% were coded as zero. Due to the relatively small sample size, only the single SNP most strongly associated with fast beta EEG was examined to minimize multiple testing. Association was tested with log-transformed heavy-episodic drinking, adjusted for relatedness, sex, age and PC1–PC10 in Mplus 7.4.48
