Tuesday November 28 2006
CEA
A neuroimaging study confirms the consequences of alcohol use on the brain
Chanraud, Martelli et al., Neuropsychopharmacology, 2006, Oct 18
CEA
A research team from the Inserm1, the CEA2 and the Paris Hospitals3 have recently demonstrated in vivo in alcohol-dependents that alcohol use leads to localised alterations in grey matter (nerve cells) and more widespread alterations in white matter (which connects all the regions of the brain). The researchers highlighted that drinking from an early age led to a reduction in grey matter volume in several regions of the brain. These findings, which came from a sample population of over 30 males, confirm the data that could previously only be obtained in post-mortem studies. The complete results were published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
The study4, conducted between 2003 and 2006, enrolled 31 alcohol-dependent males aged between 30 and 50 yrs, whose average alcohol consumption was the equivalent of two litres of wine per day but who nevertheless maintained good social functioning performance5, enabling the CEA, Inserm and Paris Hospitals research team to confirm results that could previously only be intimated from a scattered array of sources. Neuroimaging studies led the researchers to see how the brains of alcohol-dependents present anatomical alterations. They observed a decrease in grey matter in several regions of the brain, reaching 20% lower volumes in the frontal cortex. The researchers also demonstrated decreases in white matter in these same subjects, the decrease reaching up to 10% in the corpus callosum (connective tissues joining the right and left hemispheres of the brain).
Another key result of the study was that age of first drinking was a determining factor: subjects who had begun drinking at earlier age presented less grey matter volume in certain brain regions known to complete development only late on in adolescence. Alcohol use during adolescence therefore has a direct impact on brain development in these regions. These findings underline the importance of addiction research and prevention campaigns targeting young people in general.
The researchers also focused on cognitive deficits in alcohol-dependents, who showed altered cognitive functions such as planning and problem-solving, which involve the frontal brain regions. This work also demonstrated that cognitive alterations are strongly correlated to morphometric alterations in the deep brain regions. Research will continue with an in-depth exploration of changes in brain ultrastructure (diffusion MRI) and the impact on cognitive function in alcohol-dependent subjects.
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