only the ECNs, but also within reward, visual and salience networks than abstainers (n=40), networks where we did not find significant effects, possibly attributable to our large sample of subjects with varying degrees of disorder. Our study also did not include follow up data for evaluation of relapse, however, given the finding that measures of severity were associated with degradation of network integrity only within the LECN across 383 ALC subjects, the negative impact of chronic alcohol use on this control system may be critically important in the addiction cycle. As task-related fronto-striatal connectivity reductions in abstinent alcoholics have been related to impairments in learning, as well as magnitude of alcohol craving (Park et al., 2010), perhaps deficits in resting state LECN functional connectivity, representing reduced communication and cooperation between control system nodes, would also be predictive of cognitive decline. This should be studied in future work, particularly in light of a recent report finding no cognitive deficits in treatment naïve alcoholics in contrast with consistently reported deficits in chronic, in-treatment alcoholics (Smith and Fein, 2010).
