Abstract #2132

Greater Activation of Brain Regions Serving Abstract Reasoning Abilities in Alcohol Dependents: An FMRI Study

Deepika Bagga¹, Namita Singh¹, Shilpi Modi¹, Mohan Lal Garg², Debajyoti Bhattacharyya³, Prabhjot Kaur¹, Subash Khushu¹

¹NMR Research Centre, Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), Delhi, India; ²Department of Biophysics, Punjab University, Chandigarh, Punjab, India; ³Base Hospital, Army Medical Corps, Delhi, India

Neuropsychological findings suggest a deficit in abstract reasoning abilities in alcohol dependents. However, this deficit has not been studied so far using BOLD fMRI. We attempted to address this issue by carrying out an fMRI study on alcohol dependents and controls for an abstract reasoning task. Alcoholics showed a greater activation in the fronto-parieto-temporal network implicated in abstract reasoning suggesting a compensatory mechanism to meet the task performance comparable to controls.