Citation

Bjork JM, Gilman JM. Neuropharmacology 2014; 84: 101-110.

Affiliation

Division of Clinical Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, National Institute on Drug Absue, National Institutes of Health. Electronic address: jbjork@mail.nih.gov.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuropharm.2013.07.039

PMID

23978384

Abstract

Over the last quarter century, researchers have peered into the living human brain to develop and refine mechanistic accounts of alcohol-induced behavior, as well as neurobiological mechanisms for development and maintenance of addiction. These in vivo neuroimaging studies generally show that acute alcohol administration affects brain structures implicated in motivation and behavior control, and that chronic intoxication is correlated with structural and functional abnormalities in these same structures, where some elements of these decrements normalize with extended sobriety. In this review, we will summarize recent findings about acute human brain responses to alcohol using neuroimaging techniques, and how they might explain behavioral effects of alcohol intoxication. We then briefly address how chronic alcohol intoxication (as inferred from cross-sectional differences between various drinking populations and controls) may yield individual brain differences between drinking subjects that may confound interpretation of acute alcohol administration effects.

Language: en