al., 2010). In particular, heavy drinking subjects who were family history positive for alcoholism had a greater response to alcoholic drink odors (AO, as compared to odors of grape and chocolate) than did family history negative subjects. This differential response occurred in medial frontal areas shown by others (Hare et al., 2009) to code for perceived reward value. The group difference in response also interacted with alcohol intoxication, which potentiated the AO response in family history negative subjects, and reduced it in family history positive subjects. Thus, similar to animal models showing that selective breeding for ethanol preference leads to significant differences in reward system function and constitution (Murphy et al., 2002), genetic factors may affect the human reward system response to alcohol and alcohol-related stimuli.
