{"id":3081,"date":"2018-03-10T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2018-03-07T20:44:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T01:44:54","slug":"alcohol-and-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/alcohol-and-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcohol and Learning: Does Drinking Harm Memory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in October, I published one of the blog’s\u00a0most popular articles<\/a>: a summary of a study showing that moderate drinking benefits memory.\"alcohol<\/a><\/p>\n

In brief, that study showed that drinking before<\/em> learning muddled memories. However, moderate alcohol\u00a0after<\/em> learning produced a modest but clear benefit.<\/p>\n

You can understand why this research proved such a hit among teachers.<\/p>\n

Bottoms up!<\/p>\n

More About Alcohol and Learning<\/h2>\n

Back in December, Olga Khazan published an article<\/a> in the Atlantic summarizing several studies about the effects of alcohol on memory. Alas, her take on the literature sees more bad news than good.<\/p>\n

Most tellingly, she focuses on a study in Britain that tracks participants’ health over time. The short version of the findings<\/a>: more alcohol meant a smaller hippocampus. And, generally speaking, a healthy hippocampus helps us form declarative memories.<\/p>\n

This study also looked at participants’ ability to generate words. (It’s a test called “lexical fluency.”) Here again, even moderate alcohol intake meant that — over time — people had a harder time with this particular test.<\/p>\n

Alcohol and Learning: Not All Bad News<\/h2>\n

Any complex study produces complex results, and this one is no exception.<\/p>\n

First, although “lexical fluency” declined over time as a result of alcohol, there was no correlation between alcohol consumption and cognitive ability as measured by multiple tests<\/em> at the time of the study.<\/p>\n

In other words: that one particular mental ability declined, but that didn’t mean all of them did.<\/p>\n

Also: the decline in lexical fluency was significant for men, but not women. (I suspect that 51% of you are happy to read that fact.)<\/p>\n

Putting It All Together, with a Cozy Glass of Wine<\/h2>\n

We would, of course, love to have a clear understanding of alcohol’s relationship to learning. And, to brain health. And, to health overall.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there are too many variables, and too many ways to measure them, for a simple answer.<\/p>\n

I myself take medical advice from my doctor, not the interwebs. And, although I don’t drink wine because it might help me learn more, I do enjoy a nice Napa Cab on a rainy Boston evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in October, I published one of the blog’s\u00a0most popular articles: a summary of a study showing that moderate drinking benefits memory. In brief, that study showed that drinking before learning muddled memories. However, moderate alcohol\u00a0after learning produced a modest but clear benefit. You can understand why this research proved such a hit among teachers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70,23],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-diet","tag-long-term-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3106,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions\/3106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}