Neurobiology of Addiction: Alcoholics Misread Emotional Cues

Most of us have who have known an alcoholic, know the tendency that alcoholics misread emotional cues. One of the most frustrating and difficult aspects of alcoholism is the toll that it takes on relationships. When alcoholics misread emotional cues it often results in alcoholics taking offense when none was intended, or failing to interpret a loved one’s sadness, anger, disappointment, or even joy. And an alcoholics misread emotional cues can lead to further substance abuse followed by more deterioration of relationships and lives. However,

According to Medical New Today, a new study from Boston University School of Medicine found that individuals who have a long history of alcoholism, even those who have abstained (from one month to many years), showed abnormal brain activity when looking at facial expressions of others (a registering of less intensity). The brains of alcoholics, or former, alcoholics misread emotional cues because of an abnormality in their brain function. In this study, which was published in the August 11, 2009 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to focus on abnormalities in the temporal limbic (the amygdale and hippocampus) part of the brain.

“Since ‘reading facial expressions’ is an important part of social interaction, alcoholics as well as other previously addicted groups, may be suffering from brain abnormalities in parts of the brain that control emotional perception and memory,” said author Marlene Oscar Berman, PhD, a professor of neurology (Neuropsychology) and psychiatry, in regards to the study’s findings about alcoholics misread emotional cues. “Furthermore, these results reveal neural substrates underlying alcoholism-related emotional anomalies and impairments of brain reward circuitry that mediate addictions such as alcoholism.”