- Alcohol robustly activated striatal reward circuits while attenuating response to fearful stimuli in visual and limbic regions.
- Self-ratings of intoxication correlated with striatal activation, suggesting that activation in this area may contribute to subjective experience of pleasure and reward during intoxication.
- These results show that the acute pharmacological rewarding and anxiolytic effects of alcohol can be measured with fMRI.
Why We Like to Drink: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of the Rewarding and Anxiolytic Effects of Alcohol. The Journal of Neuroscience, April 30, 2008 • 28(18):4583– 4591 • 4583
