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Leave it to science to take the mystery out of the “I just love you so much, man,” beer buzz. But their findings may lead to better treatment for alcoholics, according to a study in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Although researchers have known for decades that alcohol affects the brain, it remained unclear as to exactly how the hooch makes humans feel so darn happy. “We have three decades of animal data, but this study is the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good,” says lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD, clinical project director at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
The research team found that found that drinking alcohol releases a flood of endorphins, the so-called “feel good” brain chemicals, in two very specific brain areas: the nucleus accumbens, which is linked to addictive behaviors, and the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making.
Using positron emission tomography, or PET imaging, the team looked at the immediate effects of alcohol in the brains of 13 heavy drinkers, defined in the study as having two or three drinks every day, and 12 matched “control” subjects, who were not heavy drinkers.
Before imbibing a special cocktail of alcohol used for research purposes, along with a little orange juice, the subjects were given injections of a radioactive drug that binds to the brain’s opioid receptors, a place where endorphins also bind. The researchers then mapped the receptor sites that “lit up” on the PET image.
The subjects were then each given one minute to drink the special cocktail, a second injection of the radioactive drug, and another PET scan.
By comparing areas of radioactivity in the first and second PET images, the researchers were able to map the exact brain locations where endorphins were released in response to drinking.
In all of the subjects, alcohol led to endorphin release, but there were some differences between the control group and the heavy drinkers.
Although all participants reported feeling a greater sense of pleasure when more endorphins were released in the nucleus accumbens, heavy drinkers reported feeling more intoxicated than the control group when a greater number of endorphins were released in the orbitofrontal cortex.
“Heavy drinkers got more of a reward, more of a high,” says Mitchell. “Their brains are changed in a way that makes drinking extremely pleasurable.”
The study also found that endorphins released after drinking bind to the Mu receptor, the target of narcotics like morphine and heroin.
That finding could lead to “reverse engineering,” the drug naltrexone, which makes drinking and drugs like heroin less pleasurable by preventing binding at non-specific opioid receptor sites. Compliance, however, is low, because of side effects.
“People say they don’t like how the drug makes them feel, but now that we know that alcohol releases endorphins, we believe that we can make a better naltrexone, and it could be something that people who need help would want to take,” says Mitchell.
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There are weepy drinkers, inappropriately affectionate drinkers, giggly and goofy drinkers. But there's one type of reveler you really want to avoid: the angry drinker. New research suggests how to spot one.
Impulsive, live-in-the-moment types are likely to become aggressive when they're intoxicated, according to a new study from Ohio State University's Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at the school. "We already know that alcohol increases aggression. And people who have aggressive personality traits also tend not to think about the consequences of their actions," Bushman says. "You put the two together, and it's really a toxic mix."
The average age of the study's 495 volunteers was 23, all of whom described themselves as social drinkers and none of whom had any past or present drug, alcohol or psychiatric-related problems. They each took a questionnaire designed to measure which of the participants were future-focused, and which were more impulsive. Half of the volunteers were given alcohol mixed with orange juice; the other half were given orange juice with just a teensy bit of alcohol -- but researchers sprayed the rims of the glasses with alcohol so it smelled like a full-on alcoholic drink (genius).
Then they played a little game: The participants were told they were playing against an unseen same-sex opponent in a speed reaction test, and that the winner got to give the loser an electric shock -- harmless, but still a little painful. (But, actually, they were playing against the researchers themselves.) As the game wore on, the shocks got longer and more intense, making it seem like the opponent was getting meaner and meaner with every win. The more impulsive the participants had rated themselves, the more likely they were to retaliate by upping the intensity and length of the shocks they sent the "losers."
“The less people thought about the future, the more likely they were to retaliate, but especially when they were drunk. People who were present-focused and drunk shocked their opponents longer and harder than anyone else in the study,” Bushman explained. "Alcohol didn’t have much effect on the aggressiveness of people who were future-focused."
While the impulsive types who were not intoxicated did up the intensity of the shocks, it wasn't to the same degree as the impulsive folks who were drunk.
"If you carefully consider the consequences of your actions, it is unlikely getting drunk is going to make you any more aggressive than you usually are," Bushman said.
That's because alcohol is a disinhibitor, explains New York City psychiatrist and regular TODAY contributor Dr. Gail Saltz. It doesn't cause a personality trait; it reveals what's already there, hiding somewhere inside your personality. A drunk friend may appear to be acting out of character, but we don't know what that person might be keeping under wraps, Saltz explains.
Think you're only an angry drunk when you're throwing back, say, shots of tequila? It's not that simple, says Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology at University of Missouri College of Arts and Sciences. (Bartholow led a study we wrote about earlier this year on alcohol and behavior.) Bartholow says there isn't much research looking at how drinking an unfamiliar type of alcohol changes cognitive function.
"There’s a social influence on your drunken behavior," Bartholow explains. "People drink different kinds of things in different situations. If you're at a dinner party at your boss's house, you're probably not going to be doing shots of tequila." There, you might be drinking a good sauvignon blanc, so you learn to associate the experience of drinking wine with mind-your-manners behavior. "There's a difference between what it feels like to be drunk off of wine and what it feels like to be drunk off of shots of tequila because the situations are vastly different," Bartholow explains.
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Post-booze blackout, how people fill in the blanks
Blame it on the alcohol? Maybe not
Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?
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Getting hammered to the point of not remembering much, if anything, about it is a pretty common experience for some people on college campuses or during a long holiday weekend. Reconstructing what happened during a bout of booze-fueled amnesia can either make for a hilarious movie plot like "The Hangover" or an interesting research project.
Although not inspired by the Hollywood blockbuster, a recent study looked at alcohol-induced memory blackouts hoping to learn how people "fill in the blanks" afterward and whether this information is accurate. Researchers found that people frequently turn to unreliable sources to piece together these forgotten memories.
In the study, published in the journal Memory, 280 British college students completed an online survey. Students were asked whether they had experienced either a partial blackout -- where they remembered bits and pieces of what happened after they started drinking, or a total one -- forgetting everything about what they did or saw until they woke up the next day.
Among the students who drank, 24 percent of them admitted to having a total blackout while 37 percent had a partial one. Drinking a lot within a short period of time typically causes a blackout, explains lead author Robert Nash.
Researchers found that blackout sufferers were somewhat more likely to ask people who had also been intoxicated for details of the hazy episode rather than asking people who weren't drunk but had also witnessed it. Nearly 44 percent said they had seen a photograph or video reminding them of what happened.
"I was surprised at how highly motivated people were to reconstruct these forgotten alcohol-soaked experiences, despite knowing that doing so can often lead to considerable embarrassment or panic," admits Nash, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England.
He says asking other people who were there is often the only way we can find out what happened. But that relying on friends or acquaintances who were probably drunk can make their recollections less than 100 percent reliable.
Unreliable sources can lead to memory errors and sometimes false beliefs about behaviors during a forgotten time-period. This may be true not only for boozy blackouts but for other past experiences, whether it's cobbling together childhood memories or even in cases of wrongful conviction.
Interestingly roughly three-quarters of the study participants admitted they might have unintentionally made up information when a friend passed out, such as claiming the person had sex with a stranger or puked on someone.
And nearly 17 percent of blackout sufferers later discovered they were misled by incorrect information, often coming from friends.
But having a blackout and being eager to know what happened, seems perhaps to change people's perspectives on whether a particular source could be trusted, Nash points out. "So we place faith in information sources that we would othewise consider highly untrustworthy."
His advice? "Be aware when reconstructing events of whether you are placing trust in a source because someone is truly reliable or because that person is the only option."
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We're going to guess many poor decisions were made that night.
It’s a trap that most of us have fallen into: making a rash or regrettable decision after a few cold Coors Lights. Blame it on the booze, right? A new study out of the University of Missouri College of Arts and Sciences sheds light on how the brain processes mistakes in the presence of alcohol.
In a finding that runs contrary to previous thinking, it turns out we still know we are making mistakes when intoxicated. We just don’t care as much.
“I suppose the main implication is that people shouldn’t assume ‘I was drunk’ is a good excuse for doing things one knows he or she shouldn’t be doing,” wrote the study’s author, Dr. Bruce Bartholow of the University of Missouri, in an e-mail. The study will be published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
“It’s not as though people do drunken things because they’re not aware of their behavior, but rather they seem to be less bothered by the implications or consequences of their behavior than they normally would be,” Bartholow added.
Bartholow set out to bring clarity to an area of ambiguity in brain research: Does the strength of the ERN – the error-related negativity “alarm signal” set off in the brain by mistakes – change with the presence of alcohol? Research out of the Netherlands in 2002 had concluded that intoxication reduced the brain’s capacity to detect errors.
However, Bartholow’s study challenged that assumption by asking if it’s possible that the ability to detect errors actually remained the same – but alcohol changed the brain’s reaction to those errors.
“I wondered whether alcohol's effects on error processing were less about reducing awareness of errors and more about reducing the distress that normally accompanies errors,” Bartholow said.
In the study, a group of 67 people aged 21-35 were split into three groups. While two of the three groups received a placebo alcohol (10-proof vodka-tonics), or just plain tonic, the third (lucky?) group received alcoholic beverages -- 100-proof vodka-tonics. The participants in the alcohol group got to a blood-alcohol level of about .09 percent -- just over the legal driving limit. The other two groups remained at a .00 percent blood-alcohol level throughout the study. All participants were then tasked with completing a challenging computer task.
Bartholow’s team noted that while all the groups made mistakes, those which had consumed alcohol were less likely to notice their errors. The alcohol drinkers were also less likely to slow down after an error.
However, in addition to monitoring their performance on the computer, participants also measured the subjects’ mood.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the alcohol group reported feeling less negative. (Hilariously, the group which received the placebo had a more negative mood.) Using these measurements, Bartholow’s team was able to demonstrate a correlation between the mood of the participants and the strength of the ERN. A less negative mood equaled a less severe ERN.
For the study author, the findings represent an important step in understanding how alcohol affects the brain – and the mistakes made by people who have had a couple brew-dogs. Further avenues of research could include testing whether drunk people can be sufficiently motivated to care about their mistakes (and if so, would their brain responses be similar to those of sober individuals).
Another possible avenue Bartholow is pursuing is testing whether the error-related brain activity differences observed in the study will produce changes in other parts of the brain as people attempt to correct their mistakes. In what promises to be endless entertainment for the research assistants, Bartholow is pursuing the use of an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging – or scans that measure brain activity) machine to take measurements of the study participants.
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Important health tip for the summer: Drink more wine! A better protection against harmful sunburns might be a healthy dose of SPF sauvignon blanc, suggests a new Spanish study.
A compound found in grapes or grape derivatives may protect skin cells from skin-damaging ultraviolet radiation, report researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Spanish National Research Council. The flavonoids found in grapes work to halt the chemical reaction that kills skin cells and causes sun damage. Here's what happens: When UV rays hit your skin, they activate "reactive oxygen species," or ROS, which then oxidize big molecules like lipids and DNA. This activates particular enzymes that kill skin cells.
But grapes' flavonoids work to decrease the formation of the ROS's in skin cells that were exposed to UVA and UVB rays. The researchers, led by Marta Cascante, a biochemist at the University of Barcelona and director of the research project, note that this finding may lead to better sun-shielding drugs and cosmetics.
The study was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Previously, vino has also been found to fight Alzheimer's, ward off prostate cancer and even prevent cavities. We'll drink to that.
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So good. But the consequences can be so, so bad. New research hints at why we can be enticed to overindulge -- again and again.
As you clutch the commode, pressing your sweaty brow against that awesomely cool porcelain, you pause from your very proud moment -- and take a solemn vow.
Just two words. A simple affirmation, long uttered on ugly mornings after by rookie drinkers and veteran partiers alike -- as comedian Larry Miller so astutely detailed.
“Never … again.”
Ha! A few months, a few weeks -- maybe a few hours -- later, there you stand (sort of): cold one in hand, empties stacked, evil smirk, bleary eyes, and an unfortunate path of carnage in your wobbly wake.
Why do people abandon their sincere, gut-swirling pledges to not ever, ever, ever repeat their body-shot/beer-bong benders? You know, those magical evenings that tend to include a marriage proposal to “Destiny” on Stage 3. How can some folks recover from such self-induced misery only to chase the siren call of a certain syrupy spirit despite all they lost during their last dance with Jägermeister: a wallet, a tooth, their pants and pretty much the entire night?
'Urinating on myself? It’s not really that bad'
“Those negative things happen,” explains psychological researcher Diane Logan, “but what goes on in some peoples’ minds is: ‘I’ve learned my lesson; things will be better next time.’ Suddenly, they think: ‘Urinating on myself? It’s not really that bad -- and it’s already happened a couple of times.’ ”
This is not about alcoholism. This is about social drinkers who head back to the bottle after a brutal hangover, and maybe after a drunken brawl, a fresh mug shot (or fresh stitches) and an incoherent Facebook rant.
According to a new paper authored by Logan and psychologists at the University of Washington, people are enticed to overindulge -- yet again -- for two reasons. First, the previous wild night’s fun snippets (epic dancing, hysterical one-liners and, for some, sexual conquests) in retrospect seem, at least to them, way cooler than they really were. And, second, all those nasty things they felt, screamed, wrote, broke, soiled and later paid for? Well, those consequences weren’t truly all that nasty -- they rationalize -- and besides, lots of others have suffered similar embarrassing fates after tipping too many. (The paper was published online May 30 in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.)
Scientifically speaking, the ability to later overrate happy drinking times is called “positive memory bias.” Meanwhile, the mind’s capacity to convince itself that boozy blunders were simply out of character -- and will not become a pattern -- is known as “cognitive dissonance.”
Simply put, shots of liquid courage often seem to drown out any accompanying harm that comes with a binge, said the researchers, who asked 500 college students to complete online surveys gauging their drinking habits over the previous year while assessing how often they experienced any of 35 listed negative repercussions and any of 14 positive effects.
“Rose-colored beer goggles” -- that’s what Logan and her colleagues dubbed their theory.
“It’s kind where the brain is at battle with itself,” said Logan, lead author and a UW clinical psychology grad student. “So if I’m a good, upstanding person, those (bad behaviors) just don’t quite fit together. Either I have to change my view of myself or I have to change my view of the actual activity that occurred.”
Which leads, she said, to the rationalist’s credo: “It’s not me, it’s just a part of college, or it’s just a part of drinking.”
Are you there, Chelsea Handler? It’s us, The Body Odd.
Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”
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