Research Reveals Brain Impairment in Teen Drinkers

Did you know that brain impairment in teen drinkers can be medical viewed with an MRI? Dr. Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego invited local high school students (both non-drinkers and drinkers) to have an MRI done on their brains. She gave volunteers identical thinking tests and viewed their brains while taking the exams. Teens who admitted to heavy drinking in the past showed far less brain activity (visible by the absence of red) than non-drinkers.

Which brain do you want for your child?

These images show functional activity levels in the brain of a healthy 15-year-old male nondrinker (left), and that of a 15-year-old male heavy drinker (right).

Dr. Daniel Amen, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist in Southern California, used SPECT scans to show functional activity levels in the brain of a healthy non-drinker (left), and that of a sober 21-year old with a four-year history of heavy alcohol use (right). The "holes" indicate areas of reduced brain activity.

© Dr. Daniel Amen; www.amenclinic.com

Two brain areas negatively affected by underage alcohol use

Two brain areas are negatively affected by underage alcohol use:

• prefrontal cortex
  The prefrontal area [responsible for good judgment, planning, decision making and impulse control] undergoes the most change during adolescence. Researchers found that adolescent drinking could cause severe changes in this area… which plays an important role in forming adult personality and behavior… Damage from alcohol at this time can be long-term and irreversible. Source


• hippocampus
  The hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) …suffers from the worst alcohol-related brain damage in teens… Those who had been drinking more and for longer had significantly smaller hippocampi (10 percent) …In addition, short-term or moderate drinking impairs learning and memory far more in youth than adults… Frequent drinkers may never be able to catch up in adulthood, since alcohol inhibits systems crucial for storing new information. Source

What does this mean? Underage drinking can hinder a child’s “wiring” as the brain continues to develop -- damaging the impulse control and good judgment areas of the brain, and harming learning and memory areas. This alcohol damage can cause young people to: develop social problems, have poor judgment, get into trouble, do poorly in school, and experience failure in achieving life-long goals, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism and shown in other social surveys.

Underage drinking disrupts hormones, other organs

In both males and females, puberty is a period associated with marked hormonal changes, including increases in the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone. These hormones, in turn, increase production of other hormones and growth factors Source, which are vital for normal organ development. Alcohol use prior to or during puberty may upset the critical hormonal balance necessary for development of organs, muscles, and bones. Studies in animals also show that consuming alcohol during puberty adversely affects the maturation of the reproductive system Source.

Alcohol damage can cause young people to: develop social problems have poor judgment get into trouble struggle in school fail to achieve life-long goals Source

Underage drinking can "program" the brain for alcoholism

Underage alcohol use greatly increases the risk of alcoholism, according to the Institutes of Medicine - National Research Council report "Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility."

Start before age 15	Start at age 21
40% chance	7% chance

Here's why: The brain is hard-wired to reward positive actions with feelings of pleasure so we want to repeat them. These can range from an intense emotional "high" to a happy sense of satisfaction from doing something well or for someone else. We remember pleasure from dopamine, a "feel-good" brain chemical.

Alcohol hijacks the brain's pleasure-reward system by stimulating unusual amounts of dopamine, creating feelings of pleasure from a chemical instead of natural experiences. Because the teen brain produces an abundance of dopamine (compared to an adult), it can rapidly go from liking, to craving, to needing alcohol, thus programming it for alcoholism, according to a 1997 article in the Journal of Substance Abuse.

Alcohol can also damage the brain's ability to sense pleasure from normal, healthy experiences, leaving a young person feeling "flat" after activities he or she previously enjoyed. For heavy teen drinkers, nothing else seems as fun anymore. The pleasure-reward system is becoming damaged by drinking and after a while it takes more and more alcohol to create the same amount of pleasure, leading to addiction.

There are about 16 million alcoholics in the United States and about one-fourth are teens. ParentsEmpowered.org

Some parents may question setting a no-alcohol rule because they drank as a teen and feel they "turned out fine." A multitude of recent research shows that kids today are drinking far earlier than previous generations--putting them at risk for addiction and brain damage. All parents need to set firm, no-alcohol boundaries. Draw the line.

Click here to read more