Microarray studies of transcriptional profiles in human postmortem brain, including nucleus accumbens25, motor cortex18, superior frontal cortex17,24, frontal cortex18, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex25, from alcoholics, have demonstrated gene expression changes for a large array of transcripts, indicating functional changes related to the cytoskeleton, extracellular matrix/cell adhesion molecules, immune/stress response, lipid metabolism, synaptic transmission and intracelullar trafficking, receptors and ion channels, cell signaling, mitochondrial and metabolic processes, protein modification and metabolism, transcriptional and cell cycle regulation.17–18,24–25 A number of these studies have repeatedly found changes, mostly decreases, in the expression of myelin-encoding transcripts.
