Despite these possible dysfunctions in alcoholics as compared to controls, a noteworthy inference is that the neural mechanisms for reward processing are similar in both alcoholic and control groups (as shown by the within-group analysis): i) in both groups, Gain (+50 and +10) conditions had higher ORP amplitudes and shorter ORP latencies compared to Loss (−50 and −10) as did the Large amount (+50 and −50) conditions compared to Small amount (+10 and −10) conditions (Fig. 8, right-side panels); ii) in terms of topography, in both groups, the loss conditions had anterior maxima while the gain conditions had posterior (central/parietal) maxima, especially in the ORN component. It should also be mentioned that an unusual finding in this study indicated that alcoholics showed more ORN amplitude for the small amount ‘10’ than for the Large amount ‘50’ (Fig. 8, panel A-3). This finding of increased resource allocation for the small amount in alcoholics during the early processing (at ORN) is difficult to explain and poses an interesting question for further exploration.
