That fuzzy feeling in class after a weekend of partying might be more than just a hangover.
Researchers at Spain’s Universidade de Santiago de Compostela have found that binge drinking may be associated with temporary damage to a person’s hippocampus — the region of the brain that plays a significant role in learning and memory. @@http://www.usc.es/@@ @@http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/hippocampus.htm@@
The study analyzed two memory tests that were provided to 122 Spanish college students — 62 of whom were binge drinkers and 60 who were not — in which all participants were asked to remember words and details from images.
According to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, binge drinking is defined as four or five drinks in a two-hour period.
“Until recently, it was believed that young people were more resistant to the effects of alcohol than adults. However, animal studies during the ’90s fired alarms suggesting otherwise,” study author Maria Parada, a postdoctoral researcher at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain, said in an interview with HealthDay News. “We now know that during adolescence, the brain is still maturing and that alcohol may interfere with this maturation. Yet, little is known of what happens in the nervous system during adolescence, whether these changes are different according to gender and how they are affected by alcohol.” @@http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=652966@@
After researchers had adjusted the results to minimize the risk that the study could be thrown off by external factors such as varying IQ levels, it was discovered that binge drinkers scored worse on some parts of the word memory test, not on the image detail test. Though the study does not necessarily prove that binge drinking ultimately reduces memory skills over time, it does show that the two may be connected.
Among researchers who are familiar with the study, the results are not very surprising. Aaron White, an assistant research professor at Duke University Medical Center and college drinking prevention researcher at the NIAAA, said he’s familiar with the study and said his own research supports the research found in the Spanish study. @@White: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-white-phd/18/393/7a5@@ @@http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Pages/default.aspx@@
In White’s study of laboratory rats, he noted “repeated exposure to large amounts of alcohol takes its toll on the brain’s ability to learn and remember.” White said during drunken blackout episodes, people are unable to create new declarative memories — memories that can be consciously recalled, such as specific events.
“When you get drunk, you shut down the hippocampus and don’t make any memories while you’re drunk, and it appears that if you do it often enough, it may actually damage the structure,” White said. “It is possible what the researchers in Spain found are the lingering effects of repeatedly shutting of the hippocampus with alcohol. Even if you only drink heavily on the weekends, it’s possible that you can have small cognitive impairments when classes start up again at the beginning of the week.”
On the University campus, the rates of alcohol use and abuse are relatively significant and may support that a steady number of students are engaging in binge drinking activities.
According to the University’s 2010 American Health Association National College Health Assessment, 33.2 percent of students reported that they had five or more drinks the last time they partied or socialized. In addition, the study revealed 81.1 percent of University students reported that they consumed five or more drinks at least once over the past two weeks. @@healthcenter.uoregon.edu/healthed/UO%20Executive%20Summary%20NCHA%202010.pdf@@
Though University senior Angela Pizzuto said she normally has only three or four drinks each time she chooses to consume alcohol, she admits that she does drink five or more drinks at least once a month. @@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Angela+Pizzuto@@
“I think that once I turned 21, (drinking) wasn’t a big deal anymore,” Pizzuto said.
However, some researchers believe notions about binge drinking begin long before students enter college.
Judy Andrews, a senior scientist at Oregon Research Institute, said her research of students that she followed from the first grade revealed at at least half of them began to engage in binge drinking activities once they reached their senior year of high school.
Andrews believes this is an important issue that needs to be addressed, since the brain damage from binge drinking is occurring in college students during a crucial period of time when their brains are still developing — a process that does not stop until a person reaches 24. @@http://www.ori.org/Research/scientists/andrewsj.html@@
“A student’s memory may improve slightly after they stop binge drinking, but it depends on the student,” Andrews said. “For some, it may never improve. It causes brain damage, and that’s pretty amazing. If you think about it, we wear bike helmets now to prevent brain damage.”