How Alcohol Affects The Brain

There are many consequences of binge drinking. It causes a lot of health problems in an adolescent’s life, possibly short or long term. Feeling nauseated, having a hangover and memory loss are just a few of many things that are short term. In addition to short term effects, the long term effects are more severe and even deadly. One of the worst long term effects of binge drinking is the loss of brain stem cells. Dr Fulton Crews, mentioned that “The adolescent 's brain is much more sensitive to alcohol toxicity than adults’, including being vulnerable to cell death.”

Drinking among teenagers is prone to cause long term damages in their life. At the adolescent stage, teenagers brain are still developing up until the they are in the 20’s. It is a fact that alcohol causes brain damages to anyone who consumes it but because of this occurrence in adolescent’s body,they are more affected by this. According to Saner in the article Health: Drunk young things: Teenage drinkers don 't just risk making fools of

Some may think that teenagers are grown up enough and are mature enough to drink alcoholic beverages at the age of eighteen. However, research indicates otherwise. To start off, alcohol is very harmful to the brain. It kills brain cells, and it affects the cerebellum, medulla, hippocampus and many other parts of the brain. It can be seen why alcohol is so dangerous in the article “Alcohol and Developing Brain”. The author says, “Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. Alcohol can appear to be a stimulant because, initially, it depresses the part of the brain that controls inhibitions” (toosmarttostart.samhsa.gov). Since

As a college student, alcohol is a very real and prevalent temptation. It is a normal occurrence for a Friday night to be filled with friends, a bonfire, and alcohol out on the lake. Unfortunately, not many students know the effects of alcohol on their brain. I took a personal interest in this subject because alcoholism runs deep in my family. I want to know what effects my personal consumption of alcohol have on my brain and how they will affect my life if I continue to drink or choose to stop.

Alcoholism and alcohol abuse is a huge problem and portrays many risks, one of the risks being the major health issues that come along with excessive drinking. Adolescence is the transition between childhood and adulthood. During this time, significant changes occur in the body, including rapid hormonal alterations and the formation of new networks in the brain. Teens or young

drinking can have harmful effects on a developing brain (“Dangers of Teen Drinking” FTC). As

Studies have shown that the developing adolescent frontal cortex is much more sensitive to damage than the adult frontal cortex, even with the same amount of alcohol” (Binge Drinking in Adolescence Can Hinder Adjustment to Adulthood). Crew’s explained that: “brain scans performed on rats showed that adolescent binge drinking in rats led to a smaller forebrain volume and size. The animals also showed significantly less behavioral flexibility compared to those that weren’t exposed to alcohol” (Dangers of College Binge Drinking)The study also found “reductions in the activity of neurotransmitter genes 24 hours after binge-drinking in adolescent animals. As adults, the animals showed even greater reductions, averaging 73 percent” (Dangers of College Binge Drinking). Dr. Crews said that their findings suggest that people who drink heavily during adolescence could be more likely to have “difficulty adapting successfully to changing life situations as adults, possibly because of changes to the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that is associated with predicting consequences, impulse control, reasoning, and long- and short-term rewards” (Dangers of College Binge Drinking). When a person is 21 or older their body and brain are completely

Alcohol can take a huge toll on adolescent brains as well. In the article, “Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage” the reader is told that Susan Tapert took a close look into the nerve tissue in teens’ brains. She found that kids who binge drink had “a number of little dings”(4) in their nerve tissue. This shows that there is poor connection with the brain cells. The hippocampus was affected and looked different as well. This affects memory,

Statistics say that 8.7 million Americans between the ages twelve and through twenty said they have recently consumed alcohol(“NIH)”. When a person is under the influence, they have consumed enough alcohol for their mental and physical features to become impaired. Teenage drinking is an issue that has haunted society for generations. Each year, approximately 5,000 teenagers die from alcohol related car crashes, alcohol poisoning, homicides, suicides, and other injuries (“Underage”). Scientists say that developmental transitions are key factors in a teens decision to consume alcohol. Therefore, because the teen’s brain is undeveloped, it has led them to drink. Drinking alcohol with an undeveloped brain may cause a loss of intellectual capabilities,

Brain development is a key part of becoming an adult, and it continues developing until the age of 25 (Shelat). During the ages of 18 to 20, our brains are at an important stage of development, “in which the gray-matter volume decreases and the white-matter volume increases” (MRI Study). However, drinking can reverse this effect, and younger people will develop more gray-matter then white-matter. Alcohol affects the brains as it makes us have difficulty walking, blurred

Current research suggests that substance use in adolescence leads to abnormalities in brain functioning, including poorer neurocognitive performance, white matter quality, changes in brain volume, and abnormal neuronal activation patterns. FMRI studies have illuminated enhanced cue response in adolescent drinkers, and have shown the potential to predict treatment outcomes in stimulant dependent adults. However, a few question still remain, such as whether heavy substance use during adolescence causes cognitive impairments and changes in neurodevelopment, if and when are critical periods of heightened vulnerability to such effects, and if observed abnormalities remit with reduce use. We have the capability to design studies in which we restrict

Someone is sitting at a restaurant bar. A waitress walks over handing out free shots, so he takes one. One leads to two, two leads to three, and so on. Before he realizes it, he is talking louder than ever, tripping over his own feet, and causing a scene. Toward the end of the night, he walks into someone’s table, as he is heading out of the restaurant, knocking over their meals. He tries to say something, but all that comes out is mumbling. The next morning, he is feeling dizzy, has a pounding headache, and does not remember anything from the night before.

Twenty-five percent of all calories consumed are used by the neurons in one’s central nervous system to transmit the electrical impulses that control one’s life. The brain’s development is key to one’s ability to function their life. Many things can affect brain development, one main factor is alcohol consumption in adolescence. (counterclaim), although this may be true, research suggests that the legal drinking age should not be lowered because the human brain does not fully mature until age 25, teens are more reckless drinkers than adults, and a lower drinking age would lead to an increase in driving fatalities.

http://www.alcoholism.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa022697.htm?pid=2750&cob=home. Whether a crime was committed intentionally or unintentionally has great bearing on the decision of a jury in finding a person guilty of a crime and/or on the judge's choice of punishment. You might have heard of husbands apologizing to their wives the day after they've beaten them. Their apology might sound something like, "I'm so sorry. I did not mean to hurt you, I swear!" Does alcohol have the capability to make a person forget? Can a person be unaware of his surroundings and yet still be able to interact with it? More importantly, can alcohol change a person's personality enough that it would cause him to do things

As I was browsing through numerous websites that explained the major effects of alcohol on the teenage brain, I was amazed. The brain undergoes vigorous changes throughout teenage adolescence, and alcohol abuse can seriously injure long-term and short-term growth processes. Frontal lobe development and the refinement of pathways and connections continue until the age of sixteen, and a high rate of energy is used as the brain matures until the age of twenty. Damage from alcohol at this time can be long-term damages. Not only that, these damages are generally irreversible.