2. Differential Activation to Social Reward in the Brains of Heavy Alcohol Using Females

An essential component of social health is the ability to appropriately value and respond to socially rewarding stimuli. Heavy alcohol users (HAU) are vulnerable to the effects of their social environment; HAU commonly exhibit detrimental social behaviors, and social triggers can provoke problematic use (escape). Additionally, HAU can experience alterations in the neural networks responsible for responding to and evaluating non-social rewards, but it is unknown how HAU affects the networks underlying social reward.