To determine the relationship between brain activation in response to cues and subjective craving, Pearson product moment correlations were performed between region-of-interest (NAcc, VTA, left and right OFC, or VMPFC) peak percentage signal change values and AUDIT and AUQ scores. For these analyses, more restricted region-of-interest masks for the smaller regions, such as the NAcc (x, 8 to 16; y, 14 to 6; z, −4 to −12) and the VTA (x, −8 to −4; y, −10 to −18; z, −8 to −16), were used for better localization. Group differences were investigated by converting the correlation coefficients to z scores and dividing the difference by the standard error. Larger masks were used in the main analyses to avoid missing significant findings. The regions of interest for the correlation analysis were restricted to a smaller size to focus the correlations on the peak activity in the theoretically meaningful voxels.
