Why you shouldn't even bother trying to remember last night: Drunken blackouts are caused by alcohol switching off brain’s memory function, study shows
It’s often said that alcohol killing off brain cells is behind the blackouts, but according to a study what’s actually happening is that booze is preventing new memories being recorded in the first place.
Yukitoshi Izumi, research professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said: ‘We’ve found that exposure to alcohol inhibits some receptors and later activates others, causing neurons to manufacture steroids that inhibit memory formation.’
The brain cells affected by alcohol are found in the hippocampus and other brain structures involved in advanced cognitive functions. When the hippocampal cells are treated with moderate amounts of alcohol, the key areas for memory formation are unaffected, but exposing the cells to large amounts of alcohol inhibits the memory formation mechanism.
‘Some people may be more vulnerable to alcohol’s effects than others. In other words, just because your friend may be able to drink a certain number of drinks and appear to be functioning fine, it does not mean that you or everyone else can.’ said lead author Reagan R. Wetherill.
‘Blackouts’, where very heavy drinkers wake up and are unable to remember anything that happened, are quite rare, says Weatherill – but their cousin, the ‘brown out’, where details vanish, is much more common.
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