However, these statistics, while useful in conveying the gravity of the alcohol abuse problem in the United States, do not provide insight into the recovery process nor the continuing health and cognitive disparities these individuals face into periods of abstinence from alcohol consumption. Additionally, long-term alcohol abuse results in significant, non-economic personal costs, including devastating bodily harm, with some of the most striking effects apparent in the brain. Evidence from human and animal studies suggest that select regions of the cortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus, may be more sensitive to the deleterious and damaging effects of long-term alcohol use than others, and recovery of cognitive function sensitive to these regions may occur at different times into periods of prolonged abstinence (4–7).
