This is the first article in a four-part series about the relationship between physical health and learning.
Recent research at the University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center questions the sensibility of Duke students' "work hard, play hard" mantra, suggesting that even small amounts of alcohol have profound effects on the ability of college-age students to learn and remember new information.
"There's no time when a person is called on to learn more than in college, but this is exactly the time when alcohol has its greatest negative effects on learning," said lead author of the study Scott Swartzwelder, a clinical professor of medical psychology.
The researchers examined the ability of people to learn with low levels of alcohol in their systems. After administering two drinks over the course of an hour to two test groups, one aged 21 to 24 and the other aged 25 to 29, the researchers tested the subjects for verbal and visual memory ability.
"There was a much more powerful effect at inhibiting people's ability to learn in the younger range," said Swartzwelder.
Jeff Georgi, clinical coordinator of Duke's Alcoholism and Addictions Program, stressed that society has erroneously assumed that adolescents are mentally resilient because of their superb physical recovery. "Brain recovery is exactly backwards," he said.
Several researchers emphasized that alcohol affects college-age students not only when they are intoxicated but also later, by harming their ability to process information already learned.
"The piece that Duke students need to understand is that when you study something, it doesn't get anchored automatically in the brain--it may take years for it to become a part of your permanent memory..., but if you study for four hours at Perkins, then go drinking, it affects this anchoring process," Georgi said.
Wilkie Wilson, professor of pharmacology, said the buzz an intoxicated person feels "is from impairing the NMDA receptors, which are vital for storing long-term memories in the hippocampus."
In addition, the researchers said alcohol has a detrimental effect on energy and sleep cycles. "The brain acts like a spring compressed by alcohol--when you release the alcohol, the spring bounds back again and overshoots to a period of hyper-excitability which wakes you up and disrupts your sleep cycle. And impairing the quality of your sleep impairs the quality of your ability for remembering things," Wilson said.
"The message is don't drink on the night you want to consolidate information in your brain," he added.
Swartzwelder also said that the day after a night of heavy drinking, students are easily distracted and unable to concentrate. He said alcohol can take up to 24 hours to completely leave the body, and withdrawal effects can severely limit the brain's ability to learn new information.
The researcher said that although many recognize the negative mental effects of alcohol in the short term, few understand the overall impact that continued alcohol use can have.
"Regular drinking will do permanent damage to how well you can learn," said Swartzwelder.
"If you get into a pattern of drinking, you have to think: How are you compromising your brain? Whip-sawing your brain back and forth puts a load on the brain--it's going to at least make it harder for the brain to do what you want it to do," he added.
Swartzwelder and Wilson both said that if an adolescent cannot avoid drinking, it is important that they drink in moderation. They said that although as little as two drinks may significantly impact an adolescent's memory, large amounts of alcohol are more likely to produce permanent mental effects and physical damage.
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