Good News for Drinkers

Gotta get the good news where you can find it:

• Interesting news for all you blackout drunks out there: Booze doesn't kill brain cells so much as interfere with brain receptors which can prevent memories from forming. Or so say researchers in the latest issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. “Alcohol isn’t damaging the cells in any way that we can detect,” senior investigator Charles F. Zorumski told ScienceBlog. “As a matter of fact, even at the high levels we used [in their experiment], we don’t see any changes in how the brain cells communicate. You still process information. You’re not anesthetized. You haven’t passed out. But you’re not forming new memories.”

  So, yeah, it seems that alcohol doesn't kill your brain cells. Instead it just messes with receptors in the brain, "which in turn manufacture steroids that inhibit long-term potentiation (LTP), a process that strengthens the connections between neurons and is crucial to learning and memory." No biggie!

Well that's good, because there are quite a few recent memories we'd like to forget.