Alcohol and Memory Loss: Connection, Research, and Treatment

There are no specific laboratory tests or neuroimaging procedures to confirm that a person has this disorder. The syndrome may sometimes be hard to identify because it may be masked by symptoms of other conditions common among those who misuse alcohol, including intoxication or withdrawal, infection, or head injury. Memantine, which is commonly used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, may also be effective in treating other types of dementia brought on by heavy alcohol consumption. If sufficient alcohol is present in the ACSF bathing the slice of hippocampal tissue when the patterned stimulation is given, the response recorded later at position B will not be larger than it was at baseline . And, just as alcohol tends not to impair recall of memories established before alcohol exposure, alcohol does not disrupt the expression of LTP established before alcohol exposure.

The person can continue to drink and socialize, order drinks at a bar, dance and so on. Short-term effects of memory loss are most likely to occur when you’re intoxicated. You may have trouble remembering details of what you did while drinking.

What to know about alcohol and brain damage

During the first stage, Wernicke encephalopathy causes abnormal eye movements, lack of coordination, confusion, and severe memory problems. For those who develop Korsakoff syndrome, at least 25% recover, while about 25% remain unchanged. This means they’ll struggle with when someone you love goes through drug and alcohol relapse syndrome symptoms for years.

Vanessa also holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Behavioral and Social Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Master’s of Business Administration-Human Resource Management from Columbia Southern University. Other National Institutes of Health reports have shown that abstaining from alcohol over are alcoholism and drug addiction disabilities several months to a year may allow structural brain changes to partially correct. Abstinence also can help reverse negative effects on thinking skills, including problem­ solving, memory, and attention. Memory is divided is into retrospective (long-term) and prospective or working (short-term) memory.

FES appears promising in aiding long-term recall for people with events that happened recently or for recurring events happening in the near future. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is a type of alcohol-related brain damage that can result from chronic alcohol abuse. Wernicke’s encephalopathy usually happens first, followed by Korsakoff’s psychosis. The second barrier to understanding the mechanisms underlying alcohol’s effects on memory was an incomplete understanding of how alcohol affects brain function at a cellular level. Until recently, alcohol was assumed to affect the brain in a general way, simply shutting down the activity of all cells with which it came in contact. The pervasiveness of this assumption is reflected in numerous writings during the early 20th century.

Another study found that heavy drinkers were more likely to perform worse on tests of memory and executive function. In classic studies of hospitalized alcoholics by Goodwin and colleagues , 36 out of the 100 patients interviewed indicated that they had never experienced a blackout. In some ways, the patients who did not experience blackouts are as interesting as the patients who did. What was it about these 36 patients that kept them from blacking out, despite the fact that their alcoholism was so severe that it required hospitalization?

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People can perform these abilities without even thinking about them, which means procedural memory functions automatically. While retrieval of explicit memory is severely impaired by alcohol, retrieval of implicit memory is not. Intoxicated subjects score higher on recognition tasks than they can on recall tasks . Other studies have found using benzodiazepines such as Valium and Rohypnol alongside alcohol greatly increase the chances of a blackout. Abusing these drugs without alcohol can cause memory loss, but alcohol enhances the effects of the drugs.

An overdose of alcohol affects the brain’s ability to sustain basic life functions. Because alcohol can be challenging to stop alone, many people will need to participate in a formal treatment program to overcome their addiction. Fortunately, Vertava Health provides highly successful and personalized treatment programs for those who need help with alcohol addiction.

Both chronic alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence are correlated with the altered expression, properties, and functions of the GABAA receptor that may contribute to alcohol tolerance. There is still much yet to be discovered about alcohol’s specific and varying effects on both the GABAA receptor and its subtypes. Short-term effects of alcohol abuse — such as coordination problems, slurred speech and blurry vision — fade when alcohol is metabolized, which can take hours or days. We do know that women are more likely to experience other effects of alcohol, such as liver cirrhosis, heart damage, nerve damage and other diseases caused by alcohol. In a study of 100 alcoholics published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, 36 participants said they had never experienced a blackout despite a history of heavy alcohol use.

What Are Alcohol Blackouts?

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There may be ways to lessen alcohol’s effects on memory by reducing the amount of alcohol consumed and by using memory techniques to overcome memory loss issues. Once acute symptoms improve, individuals should be carefully evaluated to determine if their medical history, alcohol use and pattern of memory problems may be consistent with Korsakoff syndrome. For those who develop Korsakoff syndrome, extended treatment with oral thiamine, other vitamins and magnesium may increase chances of symptom improvement. If there is no improvement, consideration should be given to treatment of comorbid deficiencies and medical conditions, and the need for long-term residential care or supportive accommodation. The best way to prevent cognitive impairments from alcohol is to quit drinking.

Preventing an Alcohol Blackout

This low alcohol sensitivity is a risk factor for the development of AUDs. Despite that men generally report lower sensitivity to alcohol than women (e.g. Medical News Today has strict sourcing guidelines and draws only from peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical journals and associations. We link primary sources — medications for treating alcohol dependence including studies, scientific references, and statistics — within each article and also list them in the resources section at the bottom of our articles. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy. People with a history of alcohol misuse may not be able to consume alcohol safely.

There is no obligation to enter treatment and you can opt out at any time. If you or someone you know experiences any of the above symptoms, it might be time to reach out to a specialist at Vertava Health. After an intoxicated night in “Sin City,” two people wake-up to find they got married. Alcohol also impairs and alters the functioning in the cerebellum, which affects both motor function and coordination. It has a notable inhibitory effect on the neurons of the cerebral cortex, affecting and altering thought processes, decreasing inhibition, and increasing the pain threshold.

Secondly, storage involves taking this information and holding it indefinitely in memory. Lastly, retrieval is the ability to recall information from the long-term memory storage. Alcohol also acts as a positive allosteric modulator of GABA receptors, specifically type GABAA. Upon activation, these GABA receptors conduct Cl-, resulting in neuronal hyperpolarization.

Korsakoff syndrome is most commonly caused by alcohol misuse, but certain other conditions also can cause the syndrome. There is no cure for Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, but treatment can help improve symptoms and reduce the risk of further brain damage. Supplementing with thiamine can help to improve symptoms and reduce the risk of further damage to the brain.

Effects on other brain regions

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Buddy T is an anonymous writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Verywell Mind’s content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Donate during our Annual Fund Drive to be part of the next critical breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research, and to ensure that those affected by dementia can get the care and support they need.

• If you suspect that a loved one is experiencing memory problems due to drinking, they may need your help in seeking treatment.
• Considerable evidence suggests that chronic alcohol use damages the frontal lobes and leads to impaired performance of tasks that rely on frontal lobe functioning (Kril and Halliday 1999; Moselhy et al. 2001).
• But if you’re a heavy drinker or binge drink frequently, you’re at risk for long-term problems with memory.
• There is still much yet to be discovered about alcohol’s specific and varying effects on both the GABAA receptor and its subtypes.

It’s widely considered less common than Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies. Korsakoff syndrome is often — but not always — preceded by an episode of Wernicke encephalopathy, which is an acute brain reaction to severe lack of thiamine. Wernicke encephalopathy is a medical emergency that causes life-threatening brain disruption, confusion, staggering and stumbling, lack of coordination, and abnormal involuntary eye movements.

Chronic alcohol use has been proven to cause damage to the brain in many ways. While drinking in moderation will not significantly impair long-term memory, chronic alcohol use will disrupt or damage memory. The memory inhibiting effects of alcohol are often a prominent topic in popular culture. Several movies show characters drinking alcohol to the point of memory loss and awakening the next morning with a host of problems due to actions they performed while intoxicated. Short-term memory refers to the temporary storage of small amounts of information over short delays. Digit span refers to the proposed number of pieces of information (5-9) that can be held in short-term memory.

Interestingly the hippocampus is a unique structure in which new neurons are constantly “being born” and thisneurogenesisplays a very important role in learning and memory. One of the ways in which alcohol can damage the hippocampus is by disrupting neurogenesis. These findings emphasize the need to investigate the neurotoxic effects of alcohol in adolescent women. A high, acute dose of alcohol or control refreshment was administered to a sample of 172 adolescent undergraduate students, some of which had a history of BD and others of which had refrained from alcohol consumption.

Similarly, the combination of alcohol and THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, produces greater memory impairments than when either drug is given alone (Ciccocioppo et al. 2002). Given that many college students use other drugs in combination with alcohol (O’Malley and Johnston 2002), some of the blackouts reported by students may arise from polysubstance use rather than from alcohol alone. Indeed, based on interviews with 136 heavy–drinking young adults , Hartzler and Fromme concluded that en bloc blackouts often arise from the combined use of alcohol and other drugs. White and colleagues observed that, among 50 undergraduate students with a history of blackouts, only 3 students reported using other drugs during the night of their most recent blackout, and marijuana was the drug in each case. Neurochemical changes occurring in the anterior cingulate are correlated with altered short-term memory functions in the brains of young alcoholic men.

Alcohol can damage the prefrontal and frontal areas of the brain, and this may be responsible for prospective memory impairments since prospective memory performance is highly correlated with frontal executive functions. In a subsequent study, White and colleagues interviewed 50 undergraduate students, all of whom had experienced at least one blackout, to gather more information about the factors related to blackouts. As in the previous study, students reported engaging in a range of risky behaviors during blackouts, including sexual activity with both acquaintances and strangers, vandalism, getting into arguments and fights, and others.

It uses a range of 0–40, in which a score of 8 or more indicates a problematic use of alcohol. A higher score is related to greater severity of problematic drinking. The results are expressed as number or mean ± SEM for refrainers, occasional consumers and binge drinkers. People with a history of alcohol misuse may wish to speak to their doctor about a medical detox. Without treatment, DT can be fatal in more than one-third of people whom it affects.