Frontotemporal cortical activity in Chinese male alcohol-dependent patients during a verbal fluency task: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Introduction Alcohol dependence is associated with alterations in prefrontal cortical function; however, previous functional near-infrared spectroscopy studies using verbal fluency tasks have produced inconsistent findings. This study examined differences in task-related cortical activation between Chinese male patients with alcohol dependence and healthy controls. Methods Thirty-one right-handed male inpatients with alcohol dependence and 31 healthy male controls completed a Mandarin verbal fluency task. A 52-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy system was used to measure task-related changes in oxygenated hemoglobin concentrations. Channel-wise Δβ values were compared between the groups using independentsamples t-tests with correction for multiple comparisons. Results The groups did not differ significantly in age or years of education. Compared with healthy controls, patients with alcohol dependence exhibited greater oxygenated hemoglobin activation in channel 23, which primarily covered the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and partially overlapped with the right inferior frontal gyrus (t = 3.315, FDR-adjusted q = 0.104). No significant between-group differences were observed in the other channels. Discussion Increased activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right inferior frontal gyrus may reflect compensatory recruitment of neural resources or increased engagement of cognitive-control and emotion-regulation systems. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy may be a useful tool for assessing cortical function in alcohol dependence, although larger, mixed-sex, and cross-linguistic studies are required to validate these findings.