Preclinical resting-state and functional MRI investigations are relatively scarce in the context of AUD. One study reports that 30 days of alcohol consumption affects 9 resting-state networks in rats: 8 showed a decrease in functional connectivity, while the striatal-prefrontal circuit became hyper-connected (Perez-Ramirez, Diaz-Parra, Ciccocioppo, Canals, & Moratal, 2017). This finding parallels those in AUD, where circuitry responsible for cue-reactivity becomes dominant (Kohno et al., 2017; Schulte et al., 2012). Rats given alcohol via oral gavage during adolescence showed, in adulthood, decreased baseline resting-state connectivity among prefrontal cortical sub-regions (prelimbic-infralimbic cortex and infralimbic-orbitofrontal cortex) and decreased connectivity between PFC and striatal regions (prelimbic-nucleus accumbens, infralimbic-caudate putamen, infralimbic-nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex-caudate putamen, and orbitofrontal cortex-nucleus accumbens) (Broadwater et al., 2018).
