Affiliation: | aDepartment of Forensic Psychiatry, Niuvanniemi Hospital, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland bDepartment of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland cKuopio University IT Service Centre, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland dDepartment of Clinical Physiology, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland |
Abstract: | We measured cortical dopamine transporter (DAT) in Cloninger type 1 and 2 alcoholics by using [125I]PE2I as a radioligand in human postmortem whole hemispheric autoradiography, and evaluated the putative correlations of DAT between cortical areas and nucleus accumbens. There was a low, but distinct cortical binding in the cryosections. The mean binding was generally higher in both groups of alcoholics compared to controls, and the results reached statistical significance with a large effect size (1.25) in the temporal cortex of type 2 alcoholics. This is surprising, because several studies have reported lower DAT densities in the striatum among alcoholics compared to controls. Moreover, the density of DAT had a statistically significant positive correlation between temporal cortex and nucleus accumbens in controls, whereas among type 2 alcoholics the correlation was statistically significantly negative, which may suggest some pathology relating to the antisocial behaviour of these alcoholics. |