In the following sections, we describe the factors that influence the reliability and consistency of gene expression data obtained from human postmortem brain and review the recent brain transcriptome studies from alcoholic individuals (see Table 1). We highlight how advances in sequencing technology and data analysis have revealed novel transcriptional regulation in the alcoholic human brain, summarize the functional categories and pathways that are associated with long-term alcohol abuse, and discuss advances in cell-type specific profiling studies that are refining our understanding of AUD.
