Alcoholism has been described as part of the Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS) (Bowirrat and Oscar-Berman, 2005). Recently, Makris et al (2008) showed that there was a decrease in total reward-network volume in the brains of alcoholic subjects. Findings also supported the RDS model of alcoholism by identifying dysfunctions in the brain reward circuits of alcoholics (Wrase et al., 2007; Makris et al., 2008; de Greck et al., 2009; Tanabe et al., 2009). In this context, the present study is the first electrophysiological study to examine reward processing deficiencies in alcoholics using a gambling task, although several recent studies have examined the related concept of ‘decision making’ in gambling tasks in alcohol/drug dependent individuals (Bechara, 2005; Dom et al., 2006; Verdejo-Garcia et al., 2007; Cantrell et al., 2008). Since the concept of RDS involves a cluster of impulsive-additive-compulsive behaviors/disorders (Blum et al., 1995), our study has included several measures of impulsivity along with ERP measures. The findings of the current study indicate that alcoholics manifest deficient reward processing in neurocognitive measures (in terms of amplitude and current density of ORN and
