Research shows alcohol does help you forget

Apr 4 2008 by Chris Robinson, The Journal

BINGE drinking teenagers run the risk of turning absent minded because of the damage booze is doing to their brains, research carried out in the North-East has revealed.

Psychologists discovered high levels of everyday memory loss among university students who have regular heavy drinking sessions.

Bingeing appeared to have a significant impact on prospective memory, the kind used to remember future tasks such as calling a friend or buying washing powder from a supermarket.

Study leader Dr Thomas Heffernan, from Northumbria University, said: “There is evidence that excess alcohol and binge drinking in particular damages parts of the brain that underpin everyday memory.

“Not only may these teenagers be harming their memory, if their brains are still developing they could be storing up problems for the future.”

Scientists who carried out the tests on volunteers aged 17 to 19 from the region believed the harm caused to the brain may be long lasting or even permanent.

Teenagers were asked to fill in questionnaires about how good they believed their memory was before carrying out a video memory test.

The findings were presented yesterday at the British Psychological Society’s annual meeting in Dublin.

Dr Heffernan added: “We found no differences between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers in the self-reporting questionnaires, but when it came to the video the binge drinkers recalled significantly less than the non-binge drinkers.

“Although from their own reports they appeared to have good memories, they didn’t perform as well in the video test. The binge drinkers recalled up to a third less of the items, a significant difference.” He said it was possible that the pre-frontal cortex or hippocampus regions of the brain were being impaired.

Dr Heffernan said he was opposed to young people being allowed easy access to alcohol.

Testing time

OF the group of North East university students involved in the research 26 were regular binge drinkers and 34 non-binge drinkers.

A binge drinker was defined as a male who drank at least eight units or a female who drank six units of alcohol in one session on two or more occasions per week.

One unit is roughly equivalent to a small glass of wine or half a pint of average strength beer.

Dr Heffernan said the binge drinkers he studied consumed, on average, 30 units in just two sessions.

The teenagers were tested three or four days after their last "bender," by which time their bodies would have been free of alcohol.

They were given a computer test designed to measure how good their memory really was, being shown a video clip of a typical shopping expedition.