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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Addictive Disorders

MRI assessment of intrinsic neural timescales in male alcohol use disorder patients

Provisionally accepted
Weijian WangWeijian Wang1Xinyu WangXinyu Wang1Yimeng KangYimeng Kang2Wenjing LiWenjing Li1Yichen GuoYichen Guo1Hui ZhangHui Zhang1Jiawen TianJiawen Tian1Longyao MaLongyao Ma1Bohui MeiBohui Mei1Mengzhe ZhangMengzhe Zhang1Yarui WeiYarui Wei1*Yong ZhangYong Zhang3*
  • 1The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
  • 2Huazhong University of Science and Technology Tongji Medical College Union Hospital, Wuhan, China
  • 3First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

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Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic, relapsing condition marked by compulsive drinking, imposing a significant burden on both the individual and their environment. The intrinsic neural timescale (INT) is determined through the assessment of autocorrelation of the brain activity in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, serving to elucidate the diversity of neural timescales. This study involved 55 alcohol-dependent patients and 33 non-drinking healthy controls (HCs) matched for age, sex, and hand-use habits. The AUD group exhibited significantly longer INT in the left and right thalamus when compared to the HC group. Additionally, significantly shorter INT was observed in the calcarine cortex in the AUD group in comparison to the HC group. Our study identified abnormalities of the brain activity at the resting state in alcohol-dependent patients by means of an INT approach, which may provide more insight into the neural mechanisms of alcohol dependence.

Keywords: alcohol use disorder, default networks, intrinsic neural timescale, neurodynamic changes, visualattention network

Received: 31 Oct 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.

Copyright: © 2026 Wang, Wang, Kang, Li, Guo, Zhang, Tian, Ma, Mei, Zhang, Wei and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Yarui Wei
Yong Zhang

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material