How Does Alcohol Affect Your Brain?

Cerebellum and its Role in Your Coordination

Alcohol-Cerebellum Created with Sketch. 🧠 🍺 🥃 🍸 🍷

Alcohol and the Brain

Binge drinking (drinking 5 units over a 2 hour period, followed by a period of abstinence) and high alcohol intake (more than 5 units a day), can lead to dependence, tolerance and cravings, which lead to a continuation of alcohol abuse to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

Chronic alcohol abuse can have adverse effects such as loss of balance and gait, slurred speech, slower reactions, poor memory consolidation, compromised emotional modulation and judgement. These effects in turn can lead to difficulties in social and emotional interactions, and a reduction in motivation, attention and impulse control.

These effects are studied and proven using methods such as MRI scans which show loss of neurons, particularly in the frontal lobe, the area most associated with reasoning, decision-making and rationality, however it can affect other areas of the brain such as the cerebellum (associated with balance and movement), hippocampus (memory) and amygdala (memory, decision making and emotional responses). [1]

Every year millions of people suffer from Alcohol use disorder, leading to physical and mental health problems. Prevalence of alcohol abuse and direct death caused by alcohol dependance across the world [2]

What is Cerebellum and what does it do?

Cerebellum (latin for "little brain") is one of the important areas of the brain with a primary function of motor control, which includes all directed movement, stability and balance, posture, gait and even reflexes. [3] Cerebellum is also important for cognition, emotion, attention, language control and more. [4] Antomatically, the cerebellum is located at the bottom of the brain, separate from the hemispheres. [5] You can see the cerebellum highlighted in the model below.

Our understanding of Cerebellum's function with regards to motor control, its primary function, is that it does not initiate movement, but rather calibrates and coordinates the movement for precision and accurate timing, this can in turn affect stability while standing or walking, general posture and coordination. [6]

How does Alcohol damage your Cerebellum?

Loss of balance, dizziness, ...

How does damage to Cerebellum affect you?

Loss of balance, dizziness, ...

How to assess your Cerebellum function?

Loss of balance, dizziness, ...

Treatment and Rehabilitation

Loss of balance, dizziness, ...

References

  1. Crichton, R., & Ward, R. (2013). Metal-based neurodegeneration: from molecular mechanisms to therapeutic strategies. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118553480.ch12
  2. Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (GBD 2019) Results. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2020. Available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool
  3. Holmes, G. (1939). The cerebellum of man. Brain, 62(1), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/62.1.1
  4. Schmahmann, J. D. (2019). The cerebellum and cognition. Neuroscience letters, 688, 62-75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2018.07.005
  5. Purves, D., Augustine, G. J., Fitzpatrick, D., Hall, W. C., LaMantia, A. S., & White, L. E. (2011). Neuroscience, 5th edn. Sunderland, MA. pp. 417–423.
  6. Ghez, C. (1985). Fahn S. The cerebellum. Principles of neural science, 2nd edition. pp. 502–522