A strong body of evidence in alcohol-dependent individuals has demonstrated that various cognitive capacities do return to (or nearly to) non-dependence levels of performance. However, the details of this recovery vary widely in terms of temporal resolution based primarily on the cortical structure of interest, and it is difficult to disseminate apparent recovery of damaged regions from compensation by other cortical regions with regards to behavioral function and performance alone. For example, studies appear to suggest that cognitive deficits due to PFC damage from alcohol abuse recover on a shorter timescale compared with those dependent on the hippocampus. However, as the functionality of the PFC and hippocampus is intricately related, there is a clear challenge to designing studies to directly address the explicit temporal recovery of specific structures in humans. Therefore, the findings presented here are from studies addressing broader questions of functionality in alcoholics.
