Recent evidence has suggested a disordered reward-based impulsivity in alcoholism. Wrase and colleagues (2007) reported that abstinent alcohol dependent individuals exhibited blunted engagement of ventral striatum (a key reward system brain region) during an incentive processing task that did not involve alcohol-related stimuli, but enhanced ventral striatal engagement when presented with an alcohol cue that induced craving. A more recent study (Beck, Schlagenhauf, Wustenberg, Hein, Kienast, Kahnt, et al., 2009) extended upon this evidence by demonstrating that detoxified alcohol dependent individuals showed lower ventral striatum activation during a monetary incentive delay (MID) task (which used visual cues to predict whether a rapid response to a target stimulus would lead to monetary gain, avoidance of monetary loss, or no consequences). Further, reduced activation of the ventral striatum and anterior cingulate during anticipation of monetary gain was also correlated with high impulsivity (assessed using the BIS-10); however, this finding was moderated by alcohol dependence status, such that low activation in these neural areas was only correlated with high impulsivity in alcoholics and not in control subjects. Because the ventral striatum is believed
