Just one drink is enough to permanently change the brain | PNAS

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Yes, people used to focus only on the harm of long-term drinking, but a new paper published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) tells you:

Just one drink is enough to change the shape of neurons in the brain and increase the risk of future alcohol addiction

More importantly, the change will be irreversible

It is worth mentioning that although this experiment is only based on mice and fruit flies, the researchers believe that this conclusion is also applicable to humans

Does it feel like common sense has been subverted? Come and see how scientists came to this conclusion

What are the changes in the brain?

In the study, the researchers conducted experiments in fruit flies and mice to observe the molecular, cellular and behavioral effects of a single alcohol intake

First, they chose to study the hippocampus of mice

The hippocampus, an area of ​​the brain recognized to be particularly vulnerable to alcohol intoxication, and hippocampus-mediated behaviors have long been thought to be very sensitive to the acute effects of ethanol

In addition, the hippocampus is an ideal site for the study of synaptic transmission due to its simple cellular structure and composition system, and the hippocampus can be removed from the brain and cut into brain slices to survive in vitro for several hours

The researchers performed a proteomic screen on isolated hippocampal slices from young mice and found that dozens of proteins significantly altered their synaptic abundance under acute ethanol stimulation

This also means that the balance between synapses of neurons is disrupted

In addition, the researchers found that mitochondria are critical in mediating ethanol-dependent cellular changes

Using two-photon microscopy imaging, they observed that mitochondrial migration was also disrupted after alcohol ingestion, a result that allowed the above ex vivo results to be reproduced well in the brains of live mice

Based on these two findings, the researchers speculate that these ethanol-dependent cellular changes are key substrates for the development of addictive behaviors

They tested this idea by specifically blocking mitochondrial transport in a model of ethanol reward in adult fruit flies

Similar to mice and humans, the formation of positive memories associated with ethanol intake relies on dopaminergic neurons in the Drosophila model

By knocking out Miro and Milton, two known binding proteins, the preference for odor cues in ethanol intoxication was eliminated
.

These two mechanisms, long-term homeostatic structural remodeling and mitochondrial migration, may also explain observations made in mice that a single exposure to an intoxicating dose of ethanol increases alcohol consumption and alcohol relapse
.

Although the results were based on mice and fruit flies, the researchers say the processes that contribute to this complex addiction are similar across species, meaning a similar effect in humans
.

It also shows that these permanent changes are already in the brain after the first drink, and they are also a key risk factor for later alcoholism and alcohol addiction
.

research team

The authors of this paper are a research group from the Universities of Heidelberg, Mannheim and Cologne
.

There are three co-authors, Johannes Knabbe, Jil Protzmann and Niklas Schneider.
The corresponding author is Sidney B.
Cambridge, all from Heidelberg University
.

The link to the paper is attached at the end of the article, and interested friends should come and see it
.

By the way, at what age did you first drink alcohol (brain mutation)?

Paper link:
link:
[1]https://neurosciencenews.
com/alcohol-brain-change-21298/
[2] Finish-

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