Alcohol is known for its ability to produce intoxication, a state marked by lowered personal and social inhibitions, as well as feelings of euphoria. However, alcohol achieves its intoxicating effects by literally poisoning the body. In the fully developed brains of adults who drink heavily, this poisoning can lead to extensive alterations in normal brain function and various types of brain damage. Scientists once believed that the developing brains of adolescents were more adaptive and less susceptible to long-term, alcohol-related damage than adult brains. They now know that teenage drinkers can develop alterations in their normal brain development that trigger long-term repercussions for adult brain function.
Understanding Alcohol’s Basic Effects
Alcohol produces intoxication by altering the normal levels of several different chemicals in the brain, known collectively as neurotransmitters. In turn, the changes in neurotransmitter levels trigger abnormally slowed rates of communication between the main, active nerve cells in the central nervous system, called neurons, as well as between supporting nerve cells known collectively as white matter. Slowed nerve cell communication leads to a slowdown in the overall level of central nervous system activity. In addition, when alcohol breaks down in the body, it releases a toxic substance called acetaldehyde, which irritates various tissues and cellular structures. Combined brain effects of reduced activity in the central nervous system and acetaldehyde buildup include inflammation and reduced production of new, healthy brain cells.
Specific areas of the brain subject to alcohol’s effects include the hippocampus, which helps control normal memory function; the cerebellum, which helps control muscle coordination and body balance; the hypothalamus, which helps control many of the body’s involuntary processes; and the medulla, a portion of the brainstem that also helps control the body’s involuntary functions. Alcohol also alters normal activity in the cerebral cortex, an area of the brain that plays a vital role in functions such as the processing of sensory information, the ability to reason and make judgments, the ability to use language, and the ability to control one’s emotions.
Teenage Brain Development
By the time any given person reaches adulthood, his or her brain has reached the end of a long cycle of growth and development that begins in the womb and extends all the way through adolescence. During adolescence, the brain’s structures are essentially in place, but the connections between those structures undergo large-scale changes that clearly separate the real-world function of the teen brain from the brain function of younger children and mature adults. Critically, the brain connections that undergo change during adolescence relate directly to behavior. While adults have clearly defined behavioral tendencies that contribute to their personalities, teenagers are still developing behavioral traits that include the ability to control one’s impulses, engage in sound decision-making, act appropriately in response to changing circumstances, and establish sleeping and eating patterns that support good health.
Alcohol’s Influence
According to a study review published in 2004 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), alcohol damages developing teenage brains more severely than mature, adult brains in a variety of different ways. For instance, compared to adults, teenagers experience more damage to their basic memory functions, develop more overall brain damage following multi-day drinking sessions, and also experience greater damage to their ability to produce new brain cells. In addition, when teenagers repeatedly expose their brains to alcohol, they increase their chances of developing long-term disruptions of their normal memory functions and their ability to exercise higher-level mental functions such as judgment and reason.
Rather than drinking continually, many teens participate in binge-drinking, a pattern of alcohol use that involves consuming enough alcohol to get drunk during a single drinking session, sobering up for a number of days or weeks, then getting drunk again in other isolated drinking sessions. Each time a binge drinker sobers up, he or she goes through some degree of alcohol withdrawal. Interestingly, the NIAAA notes, much of alcohol’s damaging effect on developing teen brains occurs during periods of alcohol withdrawal between binge-drinking episodes, not during periods of active alcohol intoxication. When compared to teenagers who don’t drink, teenagers who binge-drink 100 times or more have especially high chances of developing long-term impairments to memory function, basic learning abilities and the ability to accurately gauge spatial relationships between objects. In addition, teenagers who get drunk repeatedly may have increased chances of engaging in a variety of risky behaviors during adulthood.
