Deepika Bagga1,
Namita Singh1, Shilpi Modi1, Prabhjot Kaur1,
Debajyoti Bhattacharya2, Mohan Lal Garg3, subash khushu1
1NMR
Research Centre, INMAS, New Delhi, India; 2Department of
psychiatry, Base Hospital, New Delhi, India; 3Department of
Biophysics, Panjab University, chandigarh, India
Chronic alcoholism leads to a number of transient or persistent neurological and psychiatric deficits. The aim of our study was to associate the cognitive deficits observed in visuospatial information processing as assessed by PGIBBD (PGI-Battery of Brain Dysfunction) in alcohol dependents with the brain morphometry changes and duration of alcohol consumption. To that end, VBM analysis was carried out in alcohol dependents and healthy controls. Significant gray and white matter volume loss in fronto-parietal regions was observed which could account for the impaired visuospatial information processing skills in alcohol dependents.