As with our analyses of drinking characteristics and neural response to reward above, we conducted regression analyses with drinking characteristics and functional connectivity between the bilateral nucleus accumbens and the regions that distinguished alcohol and control groups' functional connectivity during the experience of winning money compared with losing money. Frequency of drinking (days/week) was associated with greater functional connectivity between the bilateral nucleus accumbens and a cluster including portions of the perigenual anterior cingulate and rostral mPFC (Table 3; Figure 5). That is, alcohol dependent adults who drank alcohol more often exhibited a stronger association between nucleus accumbens and mPFC in the context of receiving a reward vs. losing.
