The long-term cognitive effects of binge drinking are more pronounced in teenage girls than in their male peers, according to a new study from researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Stanford University.
The study surveyed 95 teens between the ages of 16 and 19 from local California public schools, 40 of whom were classified as occasional binge drinkers. Researchers determined that girls who had binge-drunk, defined as having four or more drinks in one stint for women and five or more for men, showed decreased activity a number of brain regions compared to their abstemious peers of both sexes.
"These differences in brain activity were linked to worse performance on other measures of attention and working memory ability," said Stanford University psychiatry professor Susan Tapert, a co-author of the study, as quoted by AFP.
The study’s teen participants self-reported their past drinking habits and how much alcohol they had quaffed in the three months leading up to the study. They then underwent a magnetic resonance imaging brain scan as they conducted a task that requires the part of the brain responsible for spatial working memory, which enables a person to perceive the space around them and dynamically utilize the information they collect.
According to AFP, a stymied spatial working memory can lead to problems with driving; figural reasoning, which is the logic employed in solving a geometry problem or playing a game of Tetris; remembering and executing complicated sports plays; using a map; and remembering how to get from one place to another.
The male teenage binge-drinkers who participated in the study also showed some cognitive impairment compared to their more moderate classmates but the difference was less marked than it was in the girls.
"This suggests that female teens may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of heavy alcohol use," Tapert said, according to AFP.
According to Tapert, part of the explanation for this increased vulnerability may lie in the fact that girls’ brains generally develop one to two years ahead of their male counterparts. Although the study’s participants were all in the same age range, the girls were likely in a different stage of cognitive development, perhaps one that was particularly susceptible to alcohol’s injurious effects.
Other contributors to alcohol’s gender bias may include hormonal differences between girls and boys as well as girls’ slower metabolisms, higher body fat ratios and lower body weights.
None of the teens surveyed reported having a drinking problem. The ones who had binge-drunk had done so at a social gathering, after which they had stayed sober for a few weeks. But according to Edith Sullivan, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, even a one-off night of revelry can have lasting effects on a young mind.
"Long after a young person—middle school to college—enjoys recovery from a hang-over, this study shows that risk to cognitive and brain functions endures," Sullivan told AFP.
