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. 2008 Apr 15;162(3):205-13.
doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2007.04.010. Epub 2008 Feb 15.

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

Nora D Volkow  1 , Yeming Ma, Wei Zhu, Joanna S Fowler, Juan Li, Manlong Rao, Klaus Mueller, Kith Pradhan, Christopher Wong, Gene-Jack Wang
Affiliations

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

Nora D Volkow et al. Psychiatry Res. .

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.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Brain regions that showed decreases (Baseline > Alcohol) and (b) increases (Baseline < Alcohol) in CV during alcohol intoxication (Significance level α = 0.001, 2-sided).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Brain regions that showed (a) decreases (Baseline > Alcohol) and (b) increases (Baseline < Alcohol) in relative metabolism due to alcohol intoxication (Significance level α = 0.001, 2-sided).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Scatter plot of changes in global CV versus changes in global metabolism from baseline to alcohol. These changes were not significantly correlated (p = 0.122).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Correlations between changes in CV and changes in relative metabolism with blue and yellow colors representing the negative and positive correlations respectively (Significance level α = 0.01 and α = 0.001, 2-sided).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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