Alcohol Blackouts May Permanently Alter Your Brain, Scientists Warn

So you've had too much fun on a Saturday night. You wake up bleary-eyed with your head pounding and wondering "What the heck happened last night?"

About 50 percent of alcohol drinkers have experienced alcohol-related blackouts at some point in their lives, American Addiction Centers reports. And, according to new research, this could actually be changing the structure of our brains, particularly in areas related to learning and memory.

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"When someone has an alcohol-related blackout, alcohol is disrupting mechanisms in brain regions involved in forming new memories and recalling that information later," Sara Lorkiewicz, a postdoctoral research fellow in neuropsychology at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, told Newsweek. "That is, alcohol is preventing the transfer of sensory information (i.e., vision, smell, sound) from short-term memory to long-term memory.

"This results in intoxicated individuals who are consciously interacting with their environment (i.e., they are not passed out), but do not recall some or all details of the drinking event because their brain did not process that information."

Alcohol-related blackouts typically occur when someone drinks a large amount of alcohol in a short space of time, resulting in a rapid rise in blood alcohol concentration. "The strongest predictors of alcohol-related blackouts are risky drinking behaviors (e.g., binge drinking or drinking games) common among younger drinkers," Lorkiewicz said. "Additional behaviors such as drinking on an empty stomach or polysubstance use also interfere with how the body processes alcohol [and] further increase risk for alcohol-related blackouts."

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Not everyone who drinks experiences these blackouts, even if they drink heavily, and women tend to be as a greater risk than men. There may also be certain genetic factors that influence our bodies' ability to break down alcohol, and thus our risk of blacking out after heavy drinking.

Young people are also particularly likely to experience these blackouts, largely because of binge drinking culture. However, according to new research by Lorkiewicz and colleagues, drinking in this way could result in long-term impacts on the brain and cognitive processing.

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By assessing a group of 12 to 24-year-olds over a six-year period, the team found that having alcohol-related blackouts during these formative years was associated with significant changes in brain structure, particularly in regions associated with memory and facial recognition.

"We found that alcohol-related blackouts predicted attenuated [reduced] structural maturation of brain regions involved in visual learning and memory, with changes in cognition possibly occurring at later developmental timepoints," Lorkiewicz said. "In the real world, this may look like a lower-than-expected performance in school/work or inability to form social relationships."

Young people are particularly vulnerable to these effects. "We know that the developing brain is particularly susceptible to adverse consequences of alcohol use," Lorkiewicz said. "Adolescents and emerging adults are therefore at risk for future neurocognitive changes related to heavy, intermittent alcohol use and subsequent alcohol-related blackouts."

The results will be discussed on Monday June 24 at the 47^th annual scientific meeting of the Research Society on Alcohol in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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