Alcohol & Brain Damage: New Study
- New research indicates that heavy alcohol use can cause lasting behavioral problems by damaging key brain circuits involved in decision-making.
- Rats exposed to high levels of alcohol demonstrated impaired decision-making skills in complex tasks, even after a critically important withdrawal period.
- Patricia Janak, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University specializing in addiction biology, said the findings offer a new model for understanding cognitive changes seen in humans with alcohol...
Heavy alcohol use causes lasting damage, new research reveals. This study, published in Science Advances, uncovers a link between alcohol abuse and long-term decision-making problems, specifically impacting brain circuits. scientists found that even after withdrawal, individuals may still struggle due to lasting neural impairments, potentially shedding light on high relapse rates. The research used rats to model the effects of alcohol on the brain and found that the dorsomedial striatum plays a critical role in impaired cognitive function. News Directory 3 provides the latest insights into the behavioral and cognitive effects of alcohol. Discover what’s next in this groundbreaking research.
heavy Alcohol Use Linked to Long-Term Decision-Making Issues
Updated June 19, 2025
New research indicates that heavy alcohol use can cause lasting behavioral problems by damaging key brain circuits involved in decision-making. The study, focusing on the impact of alcohol abuse on the brain, was published in Science Advances.
Rats exposed to high levels of alcohol demonstrated impaired decision-making skills in complex tasks, even after a critically important withdrawal period. Brain scans revealed notable functional changes in critical areas compared to rats without alcohol exposure.
Patricia Janak, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University specializing in addiction biology, said the findings offer a new model for understanding cognitive changes seen in humans with alcohol use disorder. “We needed an animal model to better understand how chronic alcohol abuse affects the brain,” Janak said. “Knowing what is happening in the brain of an animal when thay are having these decision-making difficulties will tell us what is happening in humans.”
The experiment, led by Yifeng Cheng, involved exposing rats to high alcohol levels for a month, followed by a nearly three-month withdrawal. The rats than underwent a reward-based decision-making test alongside a control group.
The test involved choosing between two levers, each with a different likelihood of reward. The lever with the higher reward probability switched every few minutes, requiring the rats to adapt quickly. The alcohol-exposed rats performed significantly worse on this task, which demanded memory and strategy.
Janak noted that previous animal experiments might have been too simplistic to mirror the challenges faced by humans with alcohol use disorder. “Our experiment was quite challenging and the alcohol-exposed rats just couldn’t do it as well,” Janak said. “When the right answer was constantly changing, the control rats made the best decisions faster. They were more strategic.”
Researchers linked these behavioral issues to functional changes in the dorsomedial striatum, a brain region crucial for decision-making. Alcohol appeared to damage neural circuits, reducing the efficiency of information processing in the affected rats.
The persistence of cognitive and neural impairment, even after withdrawal, was a notable finding. Janak suggested this could explain high relapse rates among people with alcohol addiction. “Alcohol-induced neural deficits may contribute to decisions to drink even after going to rehab,” she said. “We can clearly demonstrate these deficits can be long-lasting.”
Interestingly, these impairments were only observed in male rats, suggesting potential sex-related differences in the long-term effects of alcohol on brain function.
what’s next
Future research will explore how alcoholism affects other brain areas interacting with the dorsomedial striatum and investigate the reasons behind the observed sex differences.