Habituation to the alcohol cues is the most plausible interpretation for the general decrease in alcohol cue-elicited activation following alcohol priming observed in our sample. Importantly, regions which exhibited this decrease primarily included frontal and temporal regions, which are generally thought to have a role in executive/inhibitory control (e.g., 29) and gustatory sensory processing (e.g., 30), respectively. Traditionally-labeled “reward-related” regions activated by the alcohol cues task (i.e., insula and nucleus accumbens) did not display significant differences in activation between pre- and post-priming scans. Further, self-reported alcohol craving during the task generally increased within scans and remained higher for alcohol versus water cue presentations across both pre- and post-priming scans, although no significant correlations with BOLD activations were observed at the whole-brain level. This pattern of results is consistent with the notion of an alcohol priming-related increase in desire to drink and disinhibition effect on subsequent control over drinking in an alcohol dependent sample, and are especially relevant given evidence supporting disruption of connectivity between inhibitory control (primarily frontal) and reward processing (primarily striatal) networks in individuals experiencing greater alcohol-related problems (23, 31, 32).
