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Parents’ alcohol use may influence adolescent substance use and substance use intentions. Prior research has linked adolescents’ emotion reactivity with parental drinking behaviors and adolescent substance use. The present study investigated whether sub-clinical maternal alcohol use relates to adolescent neural emotion reactivity and substance use intentions in early adolescence. Early adolescents ( N = 70) viewed emotional images during a fMRI scan and completed a questionnaire about substance use intentions. Their mothers reported past 30-day alcohol use. Results showed that greater frequency of maternal alcohol use predicted adolescents’ substance use intentions. In addition, maternal alcohol use predicted adolescent blunted responses to positive emotional images in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There was no relationship between neural emotion reactivity and adolescent substance use intentions. Findings suggest that parental alcohol use may relate to adolescent’s development of reward and positive emotion processing systems, even at sub-clinical levels of drinking. 

Emotion-driven impulse control difficulties are associated with negative psychological outcomes. Extant research suggests that high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may be indicative of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and potentially moderated by negative emotion. In the current study, 248 eleven- to 14-year-olds and their parent engaged in a negatively emotionally arousing conflict task at Time 1. Adolescents’ HF-HRV and negative emotional expression and experience were assessed before, during, and/or after the task. Adolescents reported on their levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties at Time 1 and one year later. Results revealed that higher levels of HF-HRV reactivity (i.e., higher HF-HRV augmentation) predicted higher levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties 1 year later among adolescents who experienced higher negative emotion. These findings suggest that negative emotional context should be considered when examining HF-HRV reactivity as a risk factor for emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and associated outcomes.