Relating Functional Connectivity and Alcohol Use Disorder: A Systematic Review and Derivation of Relevance Maps for Regions and Connections.

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), a prevalent and potentially severe psychiatric condition, is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. This systematic review investigates the relationship between AUD and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search yielded 248 papers, and a screening process identified 39 studies with 73 relevant analyses. Using the automated anatomical labeling atlas for whole-brain parcellation, relevance maps were generated to quantify associations between brain regions and their connections with AUD. These outcomes are based on the frequency with which significant findings are reported in the literature, to deal with the challenge of methodological diversity between analyses, including sample sizes, types of independent rsFC features, and AUD measures. The analysis focuses on whole-brain studies to mitigate selection biases associated with seed-based approaches. The most frequently reported regions include the middle and superior frontal gyri, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the insula. The generated relevance maps can serve as a valuable tool for formulating hypotheses and advancing our understanding of AUD's neural correlates in the future. This work also provides a template on how to quantitatively summarize a diverse literature, which could be applied to more specific aspects of AUD, including craving, relapse, binge drinking, or other diseases.
(© 2025 The Author(s). Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)