Crum, Kathleen I.Aloi, JosephBlair, Karina S.Bashford-Largo, JohannahBajaj, SahilZhang, RuHwang, SoonjoSchwartz, AmandaElowsky, JaimieFilbey, Francesca M.Dobbertin, MatthewBlair, R. James2024-08-012024-08-012023Crum KI, Aloi J, Blair KS, et al. Latent profiles of substance use, early life stress, and attention/externalizing problems and their association with neural correlates of reinforcement learning in adolescents. Psychol Med. 2023;53(15):7358-7367. doi:10.1017/S0033291723000971https://hdl.handle.net/1805/42532Background: Adolescent substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and early life stress (ELS) commonly co-occur. These psychopathologies show overlapping neural dysfunction in the form of reduced recruitment of reward processing neuro-circuitries. However, it is unclear to what extent these psychopathologies show common v. different neural dysfunctions as a function of symptom profiles, as no studies have directly compared neural dysfunctions associated with each of these psychopathologies to each other. Methods: In study 1, a latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted in a sample of 266 adolescents (aged 13-18, 41.7% female, 58.3% male) from a residential youth care facility and the surrounding community to investigate substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and ELS psychopathologies and their co-presentation. In study 2, we examined a subsample of 174 participants who completed the Passive Avoidance learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine differential and/or common reward processing neuro-circuitry dysfunctions associated with symptom profiles based on these co-presentations. Results: In study 1, LPA identified profiles of substance use plus rule-breaking behaviors, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and ELS. In study 2, the substance use/rule-breaking profile was associated with reduced recruitment of reward processing and attentional neuro-circuitries during the Passive Avoidance task (p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons). Conclusions: Findings indicate that there is reduced responsivity of striato-cortical regions when receiving outcomes on an instrumental learning task within a profile of adolescents with substance use and rule-breaking behaviors. Mitigating reward processing dysfunction specifically may represent a potential intervention target for substance-use psychopathologies accompanied by rule-breaking behaviors.en-USPublisher PolicyAdolescentExternalizing disordersfMRIPosttraumatic stressSubstance-use disordersArticle