Frontal Callosal Fiber Integrity Selectively Predicts Coordinated Psychomotor Performance in Chronic Alcoholism

Abstract

Introduction-Quantitative fiber tracking with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides a new approach for assessing deficits in the microstructural integrity of white matter circuits that may underlie cognitive deficits associated with conditions affecting white matter, including chronic alcoholism.

Regional Brain Structural Dysmorphology in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection: Effects of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Alcoholism, and Age

“…The functional meaning of volume abnormalities was challenged with the Digit Symbol Substitution test, which assesses several components of cognitive and motor processes commonly impaired with HIV infection (e.g., 62, 86, 87) or alcoholism (e.g., 76, 88, 89, 90). Processes include directed and sustained attention, hand-eye coordination involving working memory for transcribed symbols, and psychomotor speed (cf., 76).…”

Biological Contributions to Addictions in Adolescents and Adults: Prevention, Treatment, and Policy Implications

“…Both gray matter and white matter integrity are important to brain function, with the latter particularly relevant to how brain regions connect and therefore operate in conjunction with one another. Alcohol’s influences on gray and white matter structures may explain in part differences seen in performance on cognitive tests in groups of individuals with different addictions [106, 107]. However, longitudinal studies in people with carefully assessed measures of drug-taking behaviors will help further clarify to what extent differences may reflect characteristics (e.g., neurobiological features related to impulsive tendencies) existing prior to drug exposure, those relating to drug exposure, those relating more precisely to changes in the addictive process or a combination thereof (possibly evolving in an interactive fashion).…”

“…For example, poor white matter integrity has been found to contribute to both substance and non-substance addictions like pathological gambling as well as to obesity [107, 196-199]. The extent to which pharmacological and behavioral mechanisms might alter white matter integrity to improve treatment outcome warrants consideration [3, 200-202].…”

MR Diffusion Tensor Imaging: A Window into White Matter Integrity of the Working Brain

“…Even infrequent consumption of large doses of alcohol can cause widespread reductions in FA in adolescents as revealed by TBSS (McQueeny et al 2009). Regarding to DTI-function relationships in alcoholism, frontal fibers connecting left and right hemispheres predict performance by alcoholics on a coordinated psychomotor task (Rosenbloom et al 2008), and number of reconstructed fibers running between the pons and the midbrain is related to cognitive flexibility performance of alcoholics (Chanraud et al 2009b). Also, diffusivity values in the hippocampus grey matter, which is lower in alcoholics than in controls, is related to episodic memory impairment (Chanraud et al 2009a).…”