In the context of other literature, it is intuitive that the blunted alpha activity identified in those with AUD may index alterations in alcohol addiction-related activity. Visual alpha activity is consistently related to attention processing in visual-spatial paradigms and has been shown to be modulated by frontoparietal networks36,37. Attention and frontoparietal networks have been shown to be specifically implicated in AUD38 and a reduction in alpha responsiveness may index dysfunction in these networks. In contrast, primary visual theta and gamma have been associated with basic visual processing29,39, which would most likely remain intact. Therefore, future studies should further examine whether these alpha differences are related to attentional processing, as the current study did not directly manipulate attention. Broadly, our findings also fit into a growing literature showing altered oscillatory processing related to AUD during a host of cognitive tasks40–42, which together indicate that neural oscillatory activity may serve as a useful marker for measuring brain dysfunction explicitly related to AUD.
