Person:

Maksimovskiy, Arkadiy

Background Evidence suggests that chronic misuse of alcohol may preferentially affect the integrity of frontal white matter tracts, which can impact executive functions important to achieve and maintain abstinence.

Methods Global and regional white matter (WM) microstructure was assessed using diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) for 31 abstinent alcoholics with an average of 25 years of abuse and approximately 5 years of sobriety and 20 nonalcoholic control participants. Data processing was conducted with FreeSurfer and FSL processing streams. Voxelwise processing of the FA data was carried out using TBSS (Tract-Based Spatial Statistics). Clusters of significance were created to provide a quantitative summary of highly significant regions within the voxel wise analysis.

Results Widespread, bilateral reductions in FA were observed in abstinent alcoholics as compared to nonalcoholic control participants in multiple frontal, temporal, parietal, and cerebellar WM tracts. FA in the left inferior frontal gyrus was associated with drinking severity.

Conclusions The present study found widespread reductions in WM integrity in a group of abstinent alcoholics compared to nonalcoholic control participants, with most pronounced effects in frontal and superior tracts. Decreased FA throughout the frontostriatal circuits that mediate inhibitory control may result in impulsive behavior and inability to maintain sobriety.

Background Chronic misuse of alcohol results in widespread damage to the brain. Prior morphometric studies have examined cortical atrophy in individuals with alcoholism; however, no previous studies have examined alcohol-associated atrophy using cortical thickness measurements to obtain regional mapping of tissue loss across the full cortical surface.

Methods We compared cortical thickness measures from 31 abstinent individuals with a history of prior alcohol abuse to 34 healthy nonalcoholic control participants (total sample size = 65). Cortical surface models were created from high-resolution T1-weighted images, and cortical thickness was then estimated as the distance between the gray matter/white matter boundary and the outer cortical surface.

Results Abstinent alcoholics showed reduced whole-brain thickness as compared to nonalcoholic participants. Decreases in thickness were found bilaterally in (i) superior frontal, (ii) precentral, (iii) postcentral, (iv) middle frontal, (v) middle/superior temporal, (vi) middle temporal, and (vii) lateral occipital cortical regions. Decreased cortical thickness in the alcoholic group was associated with severity of alcohol abuse.

Conclusions These findings demonstrate widespread reduction in cortical thickness as a consequence of chronic alcoholism, with most severe reductions in frontal and temporal brain regions.