Teen Drinking Dents Adult Memory, Study

Adolescents who binge drink run the risk of disturbing their memory functioning, a new study has found. 

Researchers at Duke University studying effects of alcohol on rats, found that alcohol does too much of good and damages brain's memory region. When nerve cells recall memories their connections with their neighboring neurons become stronger, a phenomenon called long-term potentiation (LTP). Fast learners are said to have higher rates of LTP. Alcohol caused saturation of rat brains with LTP, preventing them from doing more of it. This ups the risk of cell death.

The study team found that rats' hippocampus region performed badly compared to a control group of sober rats.

"Taken together, these findings reveal that repeated alcohol exposure during adolescence results in enduring structural and functional abnormalities in the hippocampus. These synaptic changes in the hippocampal circuits may help to explain learning-related behavioral changes in adult animals," researchers wrote in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Binge drinking is defined as five or more drinks for men during one session while more than four drinks during one session is binge drinking for women. While binge drinking has earlier been linked to cardiovascular problems and even sudden death, the study from Duke is the first to show mechanism of memory damage.

Studies have shown in the past that alcohol can affect brains of young people more severely than older people as brain develops till 25 years.

The Duke study's findings are alarming as a recent survey showed that binge drinking rates across states and counties is climbing for both men and more steeply among women.