Craving is inherently a subjective experience best described as a state of desire or wanting (Monti et al., 2004). The neural basis of craving has been highlighted in the most prominent neurobiological theories of addiction (Kalivas and Volkow, 2005; Koob and Le Moal, 2008; Robinson and Berridge, 1993). A number of neuroimaging studies have examined brain activation in response to alcohol cues thought to provoke craving. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study by George et al. (2001) found greater activation of the anterior thalamus and left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in response to alcohol versus control cues, when comparing alcohol dependent patients to controls (George et al., 2001). Myrick and colleagues (2004) found that alcohol cues elicited activation of the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), nucleus accumbens (NAc), and anterior cingulate (ACC), with the magnitude of activation in these regions found to correlate with alcohol craving in alcohol dependent patients, but not in social drinkers (Myrick et al., 2004). Other studies have supported the positive association between activation of the dorsal striatum and cue-induced craving in alcohol dependent patients
