resolution electromagnetic tomography) (Pascual-Marqui, 2002) in healthy individuals showed that ORN during the loss conditions had a medial frontal source while the ORN for the gain conditions primarily had a medial posterior source (Kamarajan et al., 2009). Therefore, in the current study, we have used the sLORETA to further understand the possible alterations in the current density and/or source activities of ORN and ORP in alcoholic individuals. In addition, since there were distinct gender differences observed in the electrophysiological indices of reward processing (Kamarajan et al., 2008, 2009), it was decided to analyze each gender separately. Therefore, the present study has been designed to examine the ERP components only in male alcoholics (as there were too few female alcoholics to have a combined sample at the time of the study). Our hypotheses were the following: 1) alcoholics will show decreased amplitude in both ORN and ORP components; 2) the source activity of the reward processing will be localized (by the sLORETA) to regions of frontal lobes and reward circuitry, 3) alcoholics will have higher impulsivity, increased risk-taking and decreased cognitive control on the behavioral measures; and 4) lower amplitude in ORN and ORP components will be correlated with increased impulsivity
