Effects of alcohol on adolescent brains evident in the fMRI-based literature

Teenagers and young adults who indulge in binge drinking put their brains at risk of thinning in the cortical and subcortical structures that process memory, attention, language, awareness and consciousness. Such thinning may also contribute to heightened susceptibility to later alcohol dependence.

Anita Cservenka, PhD, of Oregon State University and Ty Brumback, PhD, of UC, San Diego, arrived at these conclusions after reviewing cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of young binge and heavy drinkers. They focused on the literature that included assessments of brain structure and brain response as imaged with functional MRI.

Reporting their results in Frontiers in Psychology, the authors write that binge- and heavy-drinking adolescents and young adults have “systematically thinner and lower” volume in prefrontal cortex and cerebellar regions, as well as attenuated white matter development.

These young people also show elevated brain activity in fronto-parietal regions while performing tasks involving working memory, verbal learning and inhibitory control tasks.

Such elevation suggests “some degree of neural reorganization in young binge drinkers that results in increased reliance on fronto-parietal regions while learning novel word pairs, and decreased activity in other regions,” the authors write.

Further, in response to alcohol cues, relative to controls or light-drinking individuals, binge and heavy drinkers show increased neural response in various regions.

“These findings suggest altered neural structure and activity in binge- and heavy-drinking youth may be related to the neurotoxic effects of consuming alcohol in large quantities during a highly plastic neurodevelopmental period, which could result in neural reorganization and increased risk for developing an alcohol use disorder,” Cservenka and Brumback conclude.

The study is posted in full for free.