Moderate doses of alcohol disrupt the functional organization of the human brain

Volkow, Nora D.; Ma, Yeming; Zhu, Wei; Fowler, Joanna S.; Li, Juan; Rao, Manlong; Mueller, Klaus; Pradhan, Kith; Wong, Christopher; Wang, Gene-Jack

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2007.04.010

« Previous Next »Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume 162, Issue 3 , Pages 205-213, 15 April 2008

Moderate doses of alcohol disrupt the functional organization of the human brain

Nora D. Volkow
- National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6001 Executive Blvd, Rockville, MD 20852, USA
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 5635 Fishers Lane, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Yeming Ma
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 5635 Fishers Lane, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Wei Zhu
- Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3600, USA
- Corresponding author. Tel.: + 1 631 632 8374; fax: +1 631 632 8490.
Joanna S. Fowler
- Medical and Chemistry Departments, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA
Juan Li
- Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3600, USA
Manlong Rao
- Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3600, USA
Klaus Mueller
- Department of Computer Science, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Kith Pradhan
- Department of Computer Science, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Christopher Wong
- Medical and Chemistry Departments, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA
Gene-Jack Wang
- Medical and Chemistry Departments, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA

Received 14 November 2006; received in revised form 27 March 2007; accepted 8 April 2007.

Abstract

Acute alcohol administration decreases overall brain glucose metabolism, which serves as a marker of brain activity. The behavioral effects of alcohol, however, are likely to reflect not only changes in regional brain activity but also the patterns of brain functional organization. Here we assessed the effects of a moderate dose of alcohol on the patterns of brain activity and cerebral differentiation. We measured brain glucose metabolism in 20 healthy controls with positron emission tomography and fluorodeoxyglucose during baseline and during alcohol intoxication (0.75 g/kg). We used the coefficient of variation (CV) to assess changes in brain metabolic homogeneity, which we used as a marker for cerebral differentiation. We found that alcohol decreased the CV in the brain and this effect was independent of the decrements in overall glucose metabolism. Our study revealed marked disruption in brain activity during alcohol intoxication including decreases in global and regional brain differentiation, a loss of right versus left brain metabolic laterality and a shift in the predominance of activity from cortical to limbic brain regions. The widespread nature of the changes induced by a moderate dose of alcohol is likely to contribute to the marked disruption of alcohol on behavior, mood, cognition and motor activity.

Keywords: Imaging, PET, Heterogeneity, Addiction, Coefficient of variation