A number of studies have sought to examine the effects of EtOH on PFC function in humans using brain imaging techniques. Acute administration of alcohol increases blood flow in the right prefrontal cortex of healthy patients (Tiihonen et al., 1994) and this effect appears dose dependent. PFC blood flow was significantly increased after doses of 0.7 g/kg or 1 g/kg EtOH (Volkow et al., 1988; Sano et al., 1993) whereas flow was reduced when 1.5 g/kg EtOH was administered. Although cerebral blood flow is a useful proxy for measuring ongoing neuronal activity in awake humans, it can be problematic when studying alcohol, as alcohol acts as a direct vasodilator. An alternative approach for studying changes in brain activity during ethanol exposure is to measure changes in glucose metabolism. Whole brain glucose utilization has been shown to decrease during experiments in which the subject has self-reported feelings of “highness” (Wang et al., 2000) and mood alteration (de Wit et al., 1990). This decrease is observed in cortical areas, including PFC, with little change seen in basal ganglia and corpus callosum (Volkow
