How Alcohol Affects The Human Brain (SCIENCE EXPLAINED)

the human brain is a miraculous organ the most complex thing in the known universe but the question is this how does alcohol affect the brain what does it do short term when it gets us drunk and then sedated and also what are the long-term effects of alcohol intoxication today that's exactly what we're going to be discovering make sure to stay tuned and just before we get into the video if you'd like to get access to a free video training that shows you how to control your drinking without aa or willpower or rehab or therapy then please click the link in the description there'll be a training video there that shows you the strangest secret to controlling alcohol and how you can apply something called first principles thinking to get immediate control so if you want that video training click the link in the description you guys will love that one and now back to the video so first let's take a look at the acute effects of drinking alcohol on the brain so only a few minutes after the first drink alcohol has already crossed the gi tract and entered the bloodstream alcohol then travels through the arteries between the brain and the skull from there the arteries branch out into smaller capillaries directly into the brain at that point the alcohol has crossed the blood brain barrier from there its immediate effects on the brain largely depend on its concentration at low doses say after one or two drinks alcohol has a stimulating effect scientists now understand that at these low doses alcohol stimulates the brain's so-called reward circuitry this is a neural circuit in the brain that motivates behavior and it's particular behavior that produces rewards think stuff like sex or social status or worse other drugs now one way alcohol achieves this is by indirectly stimulating the release of dopamine which is the neurotransmitter regulating this reward circuitry this dopamine release is also thought to be linked to the buzz that you get after a couple of glasses which is you know the mild sense of euphoria now higher doses of alcohol have the exact opposite effect depressing the brain and acting as a sedative scientists don't understand exactly how alcohol produces this sedative effect in the brain there is some speculation that it might be a result of alcohol literally decreasing activity all over large parts of the brain along with this general sedative effect higher alcohol doses also bring about an anxiety effect now that scientists fancy way of saying that something lowers anxiety this is related to alcohol targeting specific regions of the brain most notably the amygdala a brain structure implicated in anxiety and anxiety disorders alcohol also reduces activity in the cerebellum a part of the brain linked to motor coordination as a result reaction times often slow down and it eventually becomes difficult to perform otherwise very simple movements so that's the short-term effects what about the long-term effects so alcohol is classed as a neurotoxin in other words it's a substance known to damage the cells that make up the brain both the actively signaling cells called neurons as well as the much larger mass of supportive cells called glial cells this is obviously a massive simplification but think of glial cells as the glue that holds the neurons together over time alcohol damages the brain in a cumulative matter in other words the damage from every single drink adds up to that from all of the other drinks in the past now the most visible and at the same time dramatic effect is actually a reduction in brain mass as the cells gradually die off from alcohol the brain literally shrinks and this is something that you can see with standard imaging methods in this image that you can see on the left right now you can see an mri of the brain of a healthy 57 year old who does not drink and on the right you can see the brain of another 57 year old with a history of heavy alcohol use you can see how enlarged his brain cavities are the so-called ventricles as the alcohol kills off the brain cells fluid fills up the ever-expanding ventricles this pretty scary stuff these kinds of imaging observations are confirmed with post-mortem studies of heavy drinkers if you measure the brains of heavy drinkers after they die you see that on average they weigh significantly less than non-drinkers and it's about 30 grams or so which translates to many billions of lost brain cells now bear in mind to get these kind of results you do have to be drinking heavily for many years and it is a very slow process now the brain is such an incredible organ that it can actually reverse some of the structural changes and regain its mass after the person stops drinking and this can happen within a few months of stopping but and this is a big book the reversal is due to a greater number of glial cells as well as the remaining neurons increasing their connections now that means the neurons that have already died cannot be replaced unfortunately now though heavy drinking does involve an irreversible loss of neurons this is not a process that takes place at the same pace throughout the brain some areas of the brain do suffer greater losses and you can see these differences reflected in the patterns of cognitive and behavioral decline that you see in heavy drinkers the area most affected and the one that suffers the greatest loss of mass is the so-called frontal lobes these are in the front part of the brain and unfortunately are involved in high-level processes that neuroscientists called executive functions these are things like decision making problem solving and attention this part of the brain is also crucial to language and motor control another structure that is severely affected is the hippocampus this is a brain structure located near the pituitary gland the hippocampus is involved in memory and learning and the damage to this structure partly explains the extensive memory problems that drinkers are known to suffer from so what do all of these neural losses translate to in terms of everyday life how exactly does a long-term heavy drinker look like in terms of cognitive capacities and what can't they do as well as a healthy non-drinker could do now unsurprisingly given that the frontal lobes are the parts of the brain that suffer the most drinker's executive functions are seriously impaired in neuropsychological testing heavy drinkers show persistent deficits in tasks that involve problem solving attention deduction of rules working memory and cognitive flexibility in short their decision making processes seem heavily compromised and this is obviously reflected in their everyday life be it personal or professional these people also show poor performance in tasks that involve visual and motor coordination things like tracking and intersecting a moving target for example now a sad takeaway from these laboratory findings is that impaired executive functioning almost certainly interferes with the person's ability to rationally assess their drinking problem and come up with a plan to stop it so sadly in other words you kind of dig yourself into a hole over the years where the more you drink the more difficult it becomes to actually get yourself to stop the other domain to suffer the most apart from executive functioning is memory again this is no surprise given how much alcohol damages the hippocampus and there are various kinds of memory for example there's a different kind of memory involved in remembering the capital of tajikistan and remembering what you had for lunch and the type of memory that suffers the most is the so-called episodic memory this is the memory of personally experienced events like for example what you had for lunch yesterday drinkers often have gaps in their recollection of past events particularly during the times when they were drinking heavily they often describe certain periods of time as being a blank they generally don't remember what they were doing or where they were at certain times and they can have difficulties placing events in their proper chronological order now curiously despite their extensive memory deficits heavy drinkers tend to overestimate their memory skills when you actually ask them to predict their performance in a memory task they generally think that they will perform as well as non-drinkers though this turns out to be far from the case now scientists call this a meta memory deficit in other words a lack of understanding the functioning and limits of one's own memory so i really should qualify all of this by saying that these effects actually differ dramatically from person to person the human brain reacts very differently to alcohol depending on various factors these include one's age sex as well as genetic predispositions for starters older people tend to be much more susceptible to the effects of alcohol they have more difficulty metabolizing the ethanol and for any number of given drinks experience higher concentrations in the blood an increasingly popular theory in the scientific literature maintains that these older people are at an increased vulnerability to the effects of toxic substances including alcohol for this reason the impairments for alcott for this reason the impairments from alcohol are much more pronounced in older drinkers this includes impairments in working memory balance and more with regards to sexes it is clear that alcohol impairs men and women slightly differently for example women tend to retain their memory better while men tend to retain their visual spatial abilities better these sex differences interact with people's age as well as the degree of drinking to really dig into the differences scientists use advanced statistical methods and even then their results leave much to be explained again if you want that video training click the link in the description and have a great day

Channel: Sober Leon

Views: 68,892

Keywords: alcohol effects on the brain, alcohol effects on brain, alcohol effects, what alcohol does to you, what alcohol does to your body, effects of alcohol, alcohol effects on cognition, how alcohol affects the body, how alcohol affects the brain, alcohol negatives, benefits of sobriety

Id: 6OQyQksllZE

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022