Study of regional cerebral blood flow in alcohol dependants using statistical parametric mapping

Objective: To investigate the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) alternations in alcohol dependants, and to compare with normal subjects using statistical parametric mapping. Methods: Alcohol dependant group: 14 males, age 40~54 years old, diagnosed with SCID-AD, all of them come from mental health centre of Putuo district Shanghai. All people have neither body nor other mental diseases, and have never used any psychotropic drug or ceased for using such drugs for 4 weeks; control group: 20 males, age 38~54 years old, do not have any body or mental diseases. 99Tcm-ECD SPECT brain imaging were performed, all image transformed to DICOM or analysis 7 format with special program. Then the comparison sit- uation of rCBF was analyzed by SPM. Results: The rCBF of bilateral frontal lobe, right cingulate gyrus, the body of right caudate nucleus were significantly decreased in alcohol dependants, and the rCBF of left inferior temporal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, bilateral precentral gyrus, left thalamus, left parahippocampal gyrus, right lentiform nucleus was significantly in- creased(P0.05). Conclusion: SPM analysis showed that significant rCBF change in alcohol dependants.