MRI is an imaging technique used to examine how disease affects brain structure, such as brain volume and cortical thickness. As such, MRI has been employed to look at the neurotoxic effects of chronic alcohol consumption on the brain. Findings suggest that chronic alcohol use or AUD is associated with lower gray and white matter volumes compared to controls. For example, individuals with AUD demonstrate significant reductions in gray matter volume in corticostriatal-limbic circuits compared to healthy controls (for meta-analysis see (Yang et al., 2016)). However, robust SG disparities exist in the structural imaging literature. As previously highlighted, 74% of structural imaging studies of substance use disorders conducted through 2016 did not evaluate SG effects or did not use appropriate analytic approaches to do so (Lind et al., 2017). Here, we review the recent MRI literature on SG differences in alcohol-related brain morphometry.
