Young binge drinkers appear to show abnormal brain activity as measured by event-related potentials during response execution and inhibition which may represent a neural antecedent of difficulties in impulse control.

No abstract

Poor inhibitory control can be both the cause and the consequence of excessive alcohol use. Adolescence and young adulthood may be a particularly vulnerable period due to (a) the weak or immature inhibitory functioning typical of this stage may contribute to the inability of the individual to control alcohol use and (b) alcohol consumption per se may alter or interrupt the proper development of inhibitory control leading to a reduced ability to regulate alcohol intake. Further longitudinal research is needed to evaluate the interaction between inhibitory control dysfunction and alcohol use in both situations.

These findings suggest that young BDs exhibit anomalies in neural activity involved in attentional/working memory processes, which increase after 2 years of maintenance of BD. This anomalous neural activity may reflect underlying dysfunctions in neurophysiological mechanisms as well as the recruitment of additional attentional/working memory resources to enable the binge drinkers to perform the task adequately.

Binge drinking or heavy episodic drinking is a high prevalent pattern of alcohol consumption among young people in several countries. Despite increasing evidence that binge drinking is associated with impairments in executive aspects of working memory (i.e. self-ordered working memory), processes known to depend on the mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann areas 46 and 9), less is known about the impact of binge drinking on prefrontal gray matter integrity. Here, we investigated the effects of binge drinking on gray matter volume of mid- dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in youths. We used voxel-based morphometry on the structural magnetic resonance images of subjects reporting a persistent (at least three years) binge drinking pattern of alcohol use (n = 11; age 22.43±1.03) and control subjects (n = 21; age 22.18±1.08) to measure differences in gray matter volume between both groups. In a region of interest analysis of the mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, after co-varying for age and gender, we observed significantly larger gray matter volume in the left mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann areas 46 and 9) in binge drinkers in comparison with control subjects. Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between left mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex volume and Self-Ordered Pointing Test (SOPT) total errors score in binge drinkers. The left mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex volume also correlated with the quantity and speed of alcohol intake. These findings indicate that a repeated exposure to alcohol −that does not meet criteria for alcohol dependence− throughout post-adolescent years and young adulthood is linked with structural anomalies in mid-dorsolateral prefrontal regions critically involved in executive aspects of working memory.