The vast majority of clinical studies have profiled gene expression in postmortem frontal cortex tissue of human alcoholics (see Table 1), but concomitant analysis of the central and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala recently provided evidence for the regional specificity of the transcriptional changes produced by alcoholism [41]. Gene coexpression network analysis was conducted to identify modules of genes whose expression co-varies across samples. Global coexpression profiles of cell-type-specific genes suggested that chronic ethanol abuse induces microglial activation in all three brain regions and neuronal degeneration in the amygdala. Interestingly, there was a coordinated upregulation of a cluster of genes involved in glutamatergic neurotransmission selectively in the cortex.
