Years of alcohol use is exclusively associated with altered activation in right inferior gyrus (IFG) extending to superior temporal gyrus (STG), but not with inter-subject differences in SSRT. Although this finding suggests that duration of alcohol consumption did not influence inhibitory control, years of alcohol use may not reflect the amount of alcohol consumed or adequately capture the deleterious effects of alcohol on cerebral activities. The latter concern is also mirrored by the lack of differences in SSRT or activations in brain areas of inhibitory control between drinkers and non-drinkers. Likewise, we did not observe a significant effect of age on SSRT but our previous cohort with a wider age range clearly documented prolonged SSRT with increasing age (Hu et al., 2012). One possibility is that alcohol use of this relatively young drinker population is relatively mild; as a result, the current findings need to be interpreted specifically with these considerations.
