Nevertheless, brain network interactions between mesocorticolimbic regions and other subcortical and cortical structures, especially in human participants with chronic AUD, have not been well-understood [19]. Historically, dysregulation in brain dopaminergic system has been postulated as the primary mechanism underlying substance use disorders (SUD) [20,21], and, therefore, studies have attempted to elucidate alterations in the reward network in human patients with SUD (cf. Sutherland et al. [19]). The integrity and communication strength of neural networks have been measured using functional connectivity [22], which is defined as the temporal dependency of neuronal activation patterns of anatomically separated brain regions [23]. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) provides a reliable approach for studying various networks underlying ongoing cognitive and emotional processes [24]. Since the phenomenon was first reported by Biswal et al. [25], a growing number of studies have examined rsFC and elucidated brain functioning, in terms of neural communication in both healthy subjects and patients with various neurological and psychiatric [24,26,27] and substance use disorders (SUD) [28,29], including AUD [30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. However, to our knowledge, there have been no studies exploring both cortical and subcortical
