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Updated: Sep 26, 2025
Disruption of Frontal Lobe Neural Synchrony During Cognitive Control by Alcohol Intoxication
Published on: February 6, 2019
Alcohol- and non-alcohol-related interference: An fMRI study of treatment-seeking adults with alcohol use disorder
Laura Murray1, Julia C Welsh2, Chase G Johnson3
1McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478, United States; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, United States.
Background:
Individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) have difficulty diverting attention away from alcohol-related stimuli and towards non-alcohol-related goals (i.e., alcohol-related attention interference). It remains unclear whether regulatory brain function differs during alcohol and non-alcohol-related interference. This study compares brain reactivity during the alcohol and classic Stroop and whether such brain function relates to AUD severity.
Methods:
46 participants with AUD completed alcohol and classic color-word Stroop tasks during fMRI. Brain activity was compared during alcohol and classic Stroop interference in the rostral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices (rACC and dACC) and correlated with self-reported AUD severity. Exploratory whole-brain analyses were also conducted.
Results:
Behavioral interference (i.e., slower reaction times) was observed during alcohol and classic Stroop. rACC activity was significantly higher during the alcohol > neutral contrast versus the incongruent > congruent contrast. dACC activity did not differ between the Stroop tasks. dACC activity during incongruent > congruent was positively associated with AUD severity.
Conclusions:
Activity in ACC subregions differed during alcohol and non-alcohol interference. Increased alcohol-related activity in the rACC, a region linked to emotional conflict resolution, suggests an interfering effect of self-relevant alcohol cues on non-alcohol-related processing. AUD severity was related to greater dACC reactivity during classic Stroop interference, suggesting that non-drug-related cognitive control impairments are more pronounced in those with more problematic alcohol use.
