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THE BRAIN ON ALCOHOL · Understanding the Brain

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  Speaker 1: Chronicle. Alcohol abuse can lead to significant brain atrophy, or
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  Speaker 1: shrinkage of brain tissue. This atrophy is not uniform across
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  Speaker 1: the brain, though, but tends to affect certain regions more
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  Speaker 1: severely than others, and very crucial regions, such as the
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  Speaker 1: frontal lobes where you have executive functions such as decision making,
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  Speaker 1: impulse control, planning, empathy, emotional regulation, anticipating consequences a whole
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  Speaker 1: lot more. Other areas commonly affected include the cerebellum, which
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  Speaker 1: is important for motor coordination certain cognitive functions, and the hippocampus,
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  Speaker 1: a key structure for memory formation. Brain altrophy and alcoholics
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  Speaker 1: is thought to result from a combination of factors, including
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  Speaker 1: direct neurotoxic effects of alcohol, oxidative stress, and nutritional deficiencies
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  Speaker 1: common in heavy drinkers. While some recovery of brain volume
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  Speaker 1: is possible with sustained abstinence, especially in younger individuals, long
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  Speaker 1: term heavy drinking can lead to permanent loss of brain tissues.
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  Speaker 1: So we'll take a little bit of look at some
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  Speaker 1: of these areas. White matter in the brain consists of myolated,
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  Speaker 1: myolated myelinated axons that connect different brain regions, facilitating communication
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  Speaker 1: between neural networks, and chronic alcohol abuse can lead to
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  Speaker 1: a significant degradation of white matter, a condition known as
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  Speaker 1: alcohol related white matter disease. The white matter degradation is
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  Speaker 1: particularly prominent in the corpus colossoms, the large white matter
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  Speaker 1: tract that connects both hemispheres or your brain. The damage
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  Speaker 1: here can be observed using what they call it a DTI,
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  Speaker 1: which shows reduced fractional aniostrophy. The consequences, what we really
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  Speaker 1: want to know is include slow information processing, impaired cognitive flexibility,
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  Speaker 1: and difficulties focusing and attention and working memory. Another one
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  Speaker 1: has reduced gray matter volume, and the gray matter volume
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  Speaker 1: is observed in various brain regions. Again, the frontal lobes,
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  Speaker 1: including the prefrontal cortex, showing the most consistent reductions. Other
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  Speaker 1: areas include the cingulate cortex and the insular in parts
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  Speaker 1: of the temporal and parietal lobes. The parietal lobes are
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  Speaker 1: responsible for sensory motor issues, so how you're feeling things,
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  Speaker 1: think feeling in your body, muscle movement. Also, temporal lobes
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  Speaker 1: are also responsible for communication, speech, and understanding. The mechanisms
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  Speaker 1: mechanisms behind gray matter loss and alcoholics are complex. The
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  Speaker 1: changes can lead to a range of cognitive and behavioral impairments,
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  Speaker 1: including deficits and executive function emotional regulation and decision making. Obviously,
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  Speaker 1: can also impair ability to speak and understand others. It
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  Speaker 1: also disrupts what they call the default mode network. It's
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  Speaker 1: a set of interconnected brain regions that are active when
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  Speaker 1: an individual is not focused on the environment externally, often
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  Speaker 1: associated with thinking about yourself, self reference what they call
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  Speaker 1: self referential thinking, and autobiogra autobiographical memory basically when you're
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  Speaker 1: thinking about yourself or what's going on. Chronicle alcohol use
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  Speaker 1: can significantly disrupt this functionality functional connectivity within this network.
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  Speaker 1: Alcoholics often show reduced connectivity between key default mode networks
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  Speaker 1: such as the medial prefunnel cortex, posterior singular cortex, and
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  Speaker 1: the inferior paratal lobules. This disruption can manifest as difficulties
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  Speaker 1: and self awareness, which is going to be in the
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  Speaker 1: parietal area, auto biographical memory retrieval in future planning, which
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  Speaker 1: is going to be the pre funnel cortex. Additionally, normal
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  Speaker 1: deactivation of the DMN during task performance may be impaired
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  Speaker 1: in alcoholics. Essentially, potentially contributing to attentional deficits and increased
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  Speaker 1: mind launtering. Those are just some of the areas that
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  Speaker 1: are affected by alcohol. The reduced integrity of the corpus
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  Speaker 1: colossalm can also lead to a range of cognitive and
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  Speaker 1: behavioral impairments. Corpus COLOSSALM connects to the left on the
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  Speaker 1: right sides of the brain. This causes a lot of issues,
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  Speaker 1: including deficits in bi manual coordination, processing of complex visual
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  Speaker 1: auditory information, lots of stuff. So alcohol, and again I'm
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  Speaker 1: not trying to be the bad person here, but alcohol
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  Speaker 1: really has a lot of issues. They can cause some
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  Speaker 1: serious problems over time. And what fools people is that
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  Speaker 1: the damage can it doesn't occur until a long time
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  Speaker 1: that they're drinking. So in other words, let me phrase
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  Speaker 1: that better. They could be drinking fifteen twenty years. That's
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  Speaker 1: when they're really starting noticing the effects of alcohol on
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  Speaker 1: these brain regions. And sometimes you can't recover, so it
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  Speaker 1: isn't immediate like some other drugs. We get impacted immediately
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  Speaker 1: and you can see the damage being done within days.
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  Speaker 1: Alcohol is a slow killer, so be careful, folks.