Parks and colleagues used fMRI to explore brain activation patterns during finger-tapping tasks performed by recently abstinent alcoholics (less than two weeks on average) and control participants (Parks et al., 2003; Parks et al., 2010). In the 2003 study, alcoholics were significantly slower than controls. Although alcoholics’ brain activation patterns were more extensive in motor and premotor cortex and in cerebellar regions compared to the controls, a measure of efficiency of brain activation (tapping rate per unit of brain activation) suggested motor inefficiency and compensatory alterations of corticocerebellar circuits. In the 2010 study, Parks and colleagues were able to equate the groups on self-paced and externally-paced finger-tapping rates, and still found that brain activation patterns for alcoholics differed from controls. Under both conditions, tapping with the nondominant hand was associated with more activation by the alcoholics in frontal, parietal, and temporal brain regions. Additionally, the self-paced tapping activated frontocerebellar networks in the controls, but only precuneus in the alcoholics. Thus, rather than enlisting a frontocerebellar network, as did the controls, the alcoholics recruited a higher-order, “more effortful” or “less automatic,”
