Ever since I was in 8th grade I was always told in my health classes that drinking prior to the age of 21 isn’t just illegal, it is also detrimental to the brain and the body. This is one of those things that people commonly disregard for whatever reason. Naturally people are going to ignore this notion even if there is sufficient evidence that proves underage drinking has negative effects. The ignorance of it is extremely evident in college situations. I can assume that a lot of times, people are unaware of these effects.
One of the effects on the brain is the fact that drinking alcohol directly effects the brains ability to convert short term memories into long term ones. A randomized control experiment was conducted that gave adolescent rodents (28 days old) interment levels of alcohol, levels that result in impairment not sedation. They were then not given alcohol and grew into adulthood. Prior to this experiment it was known that exposure to alcohol in adolescent animals, as stated by a Duke team in the experiment synopsis, resulted in adults “that are much less adept at memory tasks than normal animals.” But after the experiment, the affects at a cellular level were explored. The Duke University team concluded that alcohol affects the hippocampus, which is responsible for creating and storing memories, as well as learning.
It would be interesting to see what the long term effects on the hippocampus are. Researchers have only studied the current effects on mice but have not established how consuming alcohol during adolescence affects the mature adult brain. Although, SMary-Louise Risher, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher in the Duke Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, stated that “It’s quite possible that alcohol disrupts the maturation process, which can affect these cognitive function later on.” The experiment that was conducted may be different in humans due to the fact that the time frame is different from the time mice become adults and humans become adults. There is no option for confounding variables in the experiment because it was done in a lab. The experiment that was conducted was a false positive and rejected the null hypothesis, this is due to the fact that there was evidence the hippocampus was affected by the alcohol.
image found here
Another effect of alcohol on the immature brain is, that white matter in the brain is lost more quickly in teens that drink as opposed to those who don’t. White matter in the brain assists in the speed of nerve signals and connects to the brains gray matter. Not only is white matter effected but, Vivian Faden a scientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states that, “alcohol also can hurt a portion of gray matter in a region known as the prefrontal cortex. This area is used for attention, concentration, self-control and making decisions.”
There is no published research that is being done that has the true longterm effects of alcohol’s long term effect on the human brain but there is a lot being done on how it currently effects the adolescent brain or animals brain. As I stated above regarding the hippocampus, it would be interesting to see a longterm study being done on how the human brain is impacted over time by drinking prior to the brains maturation.