Thaindian News

Washington, April 5 (IANS) Binge drinking during adolescence, which marks a critical period for brain development, can impact its growth, affecting behaviour.

“The question is, what impact does alcohol binge-drinking in the teen years have on the brain and how might that affect our lives as adults,” asked said Fulton Crews, professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

His latest findings in lab mice point to the kind of subtle but persistent alterations in the brain’s frontal cortex that could affect decision-making and related behaviours in human adults, reports the journal ‘Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research’.

For more than a decade, Crews’ research has explored the mechanisms, characteristics and functional consequences of binge drinking on the brain, according to a North Carolina statement.

Among the changes associated with adolescent alcohol binge drinking, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed smaller forebrain volume and size in adult animals.

“Our findings suggest that human individuals who drink heavily during adolescence may be more likely to have deficits in being able to adapt successfully to changing life situations as adults, possibly tied to chemical and or structural changes in the frontal cortex,” Crews said.

“This is the part of the brain that allows us to predict consequences of our actions, control our impulses, refine our reasoning, and evaluate long- and short-term rewards.”