Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Addictive Disorders

This article is part of the Research TopicNeurobiological mechanisms of addiction: bridging Neuroscience and clinical implicationsView all 11 articles

Adolescent binge drinking predisposition is associated with differences in inhibitory control MEG event-related fields

Provisionally accepted
Luis Fernando Anton ToroLuis Fernando Anton Toro1,2*Danylyna Shpakisvka-BilanDanylyna Shpakisvka-Bilan1,2Lucía López AbadLucía López Abad1,3Alberto Del Cerro LeónAlberto Del Cerro León1,2Marcos UcetaMarcos Uceta1,4Ricardo BruñaRicardo Bruña1,5Luis M Garcia-MorenoLuis M Garcia-Moreno6Fernando MaestúFernando Maestú1,2
  • 1Center for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  • 2Department of experimental psychology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Psicologia, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
  • 3Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  • 4Department of Cellular Biology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Ciencias Biologicas, Madrid, Spain
  • 5Department of Radiology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Medicina, Madrid, Spain
  • 6Department of Psychobiology and Methodology in Behavioral Science, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Educacion, Madrid, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Adolescent binge drinking (BD) is a major public health concern, yet little is known about the neural markers that precede alcohol initiation. This longitudinal study examined whether magnetoencephalography (MEG) event-related fields (ERFs) recorded during inhibitory control predict later BD. Eighty-one alcohol-naïve adolescents initially completed a Go/No-Go task during MEG acquisition, alongside self-report measures of impulsivity, sensation seeking, and executive functioning. After two years, 44 participants remained eligible and were classified as controls (CN, n = 20; 10 females) or binge drinkers (BD, n = 24; 12 females) based on reported habits of alcohol consumption. Behavioral analyses showed no group differences in accuracy in the inhibition task, impulsivity (BIS-11), or executive functioning (BRIEF-SR). The BD group reported higher sensation seeking (SSS-V). When studying electrophysiological activity, cluster-based permutation analyses revealed significant group differences in both the M200 (180– 260ms) and M300 (310–510ms) components. In both cases, BD adolescents exhibited larger amplitudes, with sensors localized to left medial and dorsolateral prefrontal areas. These differences were moderate predictors in logistic regression models. Association between ERF and future alcohol use were not influenced by biological sex. The results converge with prior evidence of left prefrontal hyperactivation in adolescent BD and developmental studies showing enhanced recruitment of control networks during adolescence. Findings support the hypothesis that atypical prefrontal executive engagement may represent a vulnerability profile that precedes alcohol use and may contribute to the emergence of BD.

Keywords: adolescence, binge drinking, event related fields, Inhibitory Control, Magnetoencephalography

Received: 01 Sep 2025; Accepted: 18 Dec 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Anton Toro, Shpakisvka-Bilan, López Abad, Del Cerro León, Uceta, Bruña, Garcia-Moreno and Maestú. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Luis Fernando Anton Toro

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material