Chronic alcoholics typically exhibit deficits in visual working memory and directed attention and also in frontal lobe structure and function underlying these processes. We used functional MRI (fMRI) to ask whether alcoholics’ residual ability to perform working memory and attentional tasks invoke the same or different brain systems used by healthy subjects. Accordingly, 10 control and 7 alcoholic men served in an fMRI study with three conditions run in a blocked design: a 2-back task assessed visual working memory (subjects viewed a series of 0’s presented in 1 of 9 locations and pressed a button to 0’s appearing in the same spatial location as occurred two items back); a match-to-center task assessed attention (subjects pressed to 0’s appearing in the center); and passive rest (no task). Whole-brain fMRI data were acquired with a T2∗-weighted gradient echo spiral pulse sequence (1.5T, TR = 3000ms, TE = 40ms, flip = 89°, inplane resolution = 3.75mm, thickness = 6mm, 29 slices). For the working memory–rest contrast, the control group showed significantly greater activation than the alcoholic group, most prominent in bilateral dorsolateral and medial frontal cortex. For the attention–rest contrast, activation of controls was greater than that of alcoholics in prefrontal cortex bilaterally, whereas activation of alcoholics was greater than that of controls in right orbital/inferior frontal cortex. To the extent that statistical normalization adequately controls for brain structural differences across individuals and diagnoses, the results suggest a relative inability to normally activate frontal systems required for working memory and functional reorganization of the alcoholics’ approach to the attentional task.