Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have effectively characterized differences in neural responses to alcohol cues between alcohol dependent individuals and healthy controls. In a meta-analytic review, Schacht et al. (2013) concluded that in response to alcohol cues, alcohol dependent individuals show greater activation of parietal and temporal regions, including posterior cingulate, precuneus and superior temporal gyrus, as compared to controls. Cue-elicited activation of the ventral striatum most frequently correlated with behavioral measures of severity of dependence, quantity of alcohol consumed, impaired self-control, and magnitude of craving, and was most often reduced by treatment, with the caveat that these results were often derived from region-of-interest (ROI) analyses that interrogated only limbic regions (1). The assessment of alcohol craving using alcohol cue reactivity paradigms offers unique opportunities for translational science, as alcohol craving can be measured in many contexts, such as within behavioral, neural, and clinical frameworks (2). Importantly, fMRI techniques have been coupled with intravenous alcohol administration, enabling the detection of neural responses related to the acutely rewarding effects of alcohol, namely activation of the striatal reward circuitry (3, 4).
