Binge drinking during young adulthood and adolescence can significantly increase the risk of damages to the adult brain in later years, new findings published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research reveal.
According to a new study, conducted by scientists in the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at Durham Veterans Affairs and Duke University Medical Centers, youth who consume alcohol in their teenage years could seriously damage their brains in a way that will make memory and learning difficult later in life.
“In the eyes of the law, once people reach the age of 18, they are considered adult, but the brain continues to mature and refine all the way into the mid-20s,” said lead author Mary-Louise Risher, of the Duke Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, according to the LA Times.
“It’s important for young people to know that when they drink heavily during this period of development, there could be changes occurring that have a lasting impact on memory and other cognitive functions.”
The research was conducted using rodents whose brains were still developing. The researchers gave alcohol to them during the adolescent phase — enough that, proportionally, it would cause impairment in a human but not to a blackout level. After a little while, the team stopped giving the rodents alcohol and let them grow into adulthood, which takes about 24 to 29 days.
Researchers then sent a small electrical pulse to the hippocampus portion of the rodents’ brains and measured how the brain’s synapses worked. It was found that too much alcohol exposure changed the way the hippocampus functioned. Hippocampus is the part of the brain which is associated with memory and learning.
The study concluded that excessive drinking could cause brain cells to be more vulnerable to injury from trauma or disease into adult life.
