Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage

For teenagers, the effects of a drunken night out may linger long after the hangover wears off.

A recent study led by neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don't.

Tapert's team found damaged nerve tissue in the brains of the teens who drank. The researchers believe this damage negatively affects attention span in boys, and girls' ability to comprehend and interpret visual information.

"First of all, the adolescent brain is still undergoing several maturational processes that render it more vulnerable to some of the effects of substances," Tapert says.

In other words, key areas of the brain are still under construction during the adolescent years, and are more sensitive to the toxic effects of drugs and alcohol.

Thought, Memory Functions Affected

For the study, published last month in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Tapert looked at 12- to 14-year-olds before they used any alcohol or drugs. Over time, some of the kids started to drink, a few rather heavily — consuming four or five drinks per occasion, two or three times a month — classic binge drinking behavior in teens.

Comparing the young people who drank heavily with those who remained non-drinkers, Tapert's team found that the binge drinkers did worse on thinking and memory tests. There was also a distinct gender difference.

"For girls who had been engaging in heavy drinking during adolescence, it looks like they're performing more poorly on tests of spatial functioning, which links to mathematics, engineering kinds of functions," Tapert says.

And the boys?

"For boys who engaged in binge drinking during adolescence, we see poor performance on tests of attention — so being able to focus on something that might be somewhat boring, for a sustained period of time," Tapert says. "The magnitude of the difference is 10 percent. I like to think of it as the difference between an A and a B."

Teenage Tendency To Experiment To Blame

Pediatrician and brain researcher Ron Dahl from the University of Pittsburgh notes that adolescents seem to have a higher tolerance for the negative immediate effects of binge drinking, such as feeling ill and nauseated.

"Which makes it easier to consume higher amounts and enjoy some of the positive aspects," Dahl says. "But, of course, that also creates a liability for the spiral of addiction and binge use of these substances."

He adds that there is a unique feature of the teenage brain that drives much behavior during adolescence: The teen brain is primed and ready for intense, all-consuming learning.