Neuroimaging and Alcohol-Use Disorder (AUD)

Alcohol-use disorder (AUD) is one of the most common substance-related disorders, causing significant health and economic consequences. There is race-, gender-, and sex-related differences, as well as different patterns of misuse or “drinking behaviors.” Alcohol-use disorder is commonly comorbid to other substance abuses and other psychiatric disorders in general. There is obvious brain “damage” caused by alcohol misuse as found by neuroimaging techniques. Of course, the use of neuroimaging is not widely approved as to confirm AUD in diagnostic plan or as a tool in predicting the course of the disorder, but the contemporary research is focusing on doing so. This short chapter aims at systematizing the general findings via different neuroimaging methods in AUD.