Brain activation during the Stroop task in adolescents with severe substance and conduct problems: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND Although many neuroimaging studies have examined changes in brain function in adults with substance use disorders, far fewer have examined adolescents. This study investigated patterns of brain activation in adolescents with severe substance and conduct problems (SCP) compared to controls. METHODS Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 1.5Tesla assessed brain activation in 12 adolescent males with SCP, ranging in age from 14 to 18, and 12 controls similar in age, gender, and neighborhood while performing the attentionally demanding Stroop task. RESULTS Even though the adolescents with SCP performed as well as the controls, they activated a more extensive set of brain structures for incongruent (e.g., "red" in blue ink) versus congruent (e.g. "red" in red ink) trials. These regions included parahippocampal regions bilaterally, posterior regions involved in language-related processing, right-sided medial prefrontal areas, and subcortical regions including the thalamus and caudate. CONCLUSION These preliminary results suggest that the neural mechanisms of attentional control in youth with SCP differ from youth without such problems. This difficulty may prevent SCP youth from ignoring salient but distracting information in the environment, such as drug-related information.