Negative urgency was related to subjective craving for alcohol, and AcO BOLD activation in left and right vmPFC, which sends axonal projections to the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens (Chiba et al., 2001; Haber et al., 2006; Williams & Goldman-Rakic, 1998), and which responds to both alcohol cues (e.g., Bragulat et al., 2010; Filbey et al., 2008; Kareken et al., 2010a, 2010b; Myrick et al., 2008) and food aromas during fasting (Bragulat et al., 2008; Eiler et al., 2011). The current data suggest that vmPFC neural responses and negative urgency have much shared variance, and that vmPFC responses to alcohol olfactory cues might exert the effect on alcohol craving and problematic alcohol consumption by increasing the likelihood of negative emotion-based rash action. This suggests a potential underlying neurobiological mechanism for the development and maintenance of the trait of negative urgency, and suggests that general negative emotion-based rash action might be a means through which increased reactivity towards alcohol cues might facilitate subsequent alcohol craving and consumption. Negative urgency also interacted with craving type, such that negative urgency was positively associated with alcohol cravings and not associated with appetitive control cravings.
