The demographic and clinical characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1, and a detailed description is available in Pandey et al. [6]. All participants in the current study were drawn from the sample of a larger study on brain dysfunction in chronic alcoholism conducted at the SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Brooklyn, NY, USA. From a selected list of adult male participants who could be contacted during the MRI data collection period (n = 152), 68 individuals who had a lifetime AUD (DSM-IV alcohol dependence criteria) and 84 individuals who did not have any diagnosis of substance use disorders (SUD) were identified. Subjects from these subsets (AUD patients and non-SUD community controls) who agreed to participate and met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, including the MRI scanning protocols, were recruited for the current study until 30 subjects in each group (AUD and controls) were successfully scanned. Thus, the final sample comprised thirty male participants with AUD (mean age (SD) = 41.42 (7.31) years) and thirty unaffected male controls (mean age (SD) = 27.44 (4.74) years). The race distribution
