Damaged Brain Tissue
Tapert wanted to find out in what way binge drinking affects a teen’s developing brain. So using brain imaging, she focused on the white matter, or nerve tissue, of the brain.
“White matter is very important for the relay of information between brain cells; and we know that it is continuing to develop during adolescence,” Tapert says.
So Tapert imaged the brains of two groups of high school students: binge drinkers and a matched group of teens with no history of binge drinking. She reports in her recent study a marked difference in the white matter of the binge drinkers.
“They appeared to have a number of little dings throughout their brains’ white matter, indicating poor quality,” Tapert says.
And poor quality of the brain’s white matter indicates poor, inefficient communication between brain cells.
“These results were actually surprising to me because the binge drinking kids hadn’t, in fact, engaged in a great deal of binge drinking. They were drinking on average once or twice a month, but when they did drink, it was to a relatively high quantity of at least four or five drinks an occasion,” she says.
In another study, Tapert reported abnormal functioning in the hippocampus — a key area for memory formation — in teen binge drinkers. Reflecting their abnormal brain scans, the teen drinkers did more poorly on learning verbal material than their non-drinking counterparts.
What remains unknown, says Tapert, is if the cognitive downward slide in teenage binge drinkers is reversible.