, 2005 and Visser et al., 1999). Of these regions, superior frontal cortex and precentral cortex are involved in top-down cognitive control of processing sensory inputs and actions that guide behaviour (Miller and Cohen, 2001). In addition, precentral cortex and supramarginal cortex are associated with response inhibition abilities, such as those measured with stop signal tasks (Chambers et al., 2009). Although this study did not establish a link with functional impairment, the volume deficits in these cortical regions would suggest disruption of cognitive control functions associated

with atrophy in these regions, congruent with previous findings of cognitive impairments in AUDs (Moselhy et al., 2001). Furthermore, smaller parietal cortex volumes have been associated with frequent buy SB203580 findings of impairments in visual spatial abilities and sensory integration in AUDs (Sullivan et al., 2000). GM reduction in the insula, thalamus and putamen is also consistent with previous studies (Durazzo et al., 2004, Harding

et al., 2000, Kril et al., 1997 and Mechtcheriakov et al., 2007), regions associated with emotion regulation, arousal, attention and appetitive behaviour, functions that have been found to be disrupted in AUDs (e.g., George et al., 2001, Heinz et al., 2007 and Vollstadt-Klein et al., 2010). As expected, we did not find brain regions showing larger volumes Onalespib in AUDs compared to HCs. In contrast to previous VBM studies in AUD, our AUD group consisted of treatment seeking and community based AUDs (Fein et al., 2009, Jang

et al., 2007, Kril and Halliday, 1999, Mechtcheriakov et al., 2007, Sullivan et al., 2005 and Visser et al., 1999). Compared to treatment-seeking alcoholics, treatment-naïve alcoholics have been reported to demonstrate a different drinking trajectory and less for severe levels of lifetime alcohol consumption (Fein and Landman, 2005), as well as lower magnitudes of alcohol-induced cerebral morphological abnormalities (Fein et al., 2002a). We found consistent GM volume reductions in our mixed treatment seeking and community based AUD group. This could be explained by the fact that, although overall our AUD group may have been less severely afflicted, the AUDs had shorter abstinence duration than in most other VBM studies including treatment seeking AUDs (Cardenas et al., 2007, Chanraud et al., 2007, Mechtcheriakov et al., 2007 and Rando et al., 2011). Indeed, abstinence has been shown to lead to a (partial) recovery of GM volumes (Agartz et al., 2003, Bartsch et al., 2007, Wobrock et al., 2009 and Gazdzinski et al., 2005). Further research is needed to test whether AUDs with longer abstinence duration resemble PRGs more on GM volumes than our current AUDs. Based on similarities in neuropsychological profiles between PRGs and AUDs (e.g., Goudriaan et al., 2006), we expected to find a similar pattern of reduced GM volumes in PRGs as in AUDs.