"Alcohol: Fast Effect, But No Beer Goggles"
Quick effect: "For the first time, researchers have proved the rapid changes that drinking alcohol causes in human brain cells. Previous tests on how alcohol affects the brain have only been done on animals. Scientists set out to test the well-known saying that just one drink can quickly go to your head. Only six minutes after consuming an amount of alcohol equivalent to three glasses of beer or two glasses of wine, leading to a blood alcohol level of 0.05 to 0.06 percent, changes had already taken place in brain cells.The researchers from Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany said it is known the brain reacts quickly to alcohol, but wanted to find out how rapid the effect was. Eight male and seven female volunteers took part in an experiment where they drank a specified amount of alcohol through a 90cm-long straw while lying in a MRI brain scanner. The goal was to reach a blood alcohol content of 0.05 to 0.06 percent - a level that impairs ability to drive, but does not induce severe intoxication.
The scanner allowed the scientists to examine the tiny changes in brain cell tissue structure caused by the alcohol. Dr Armin Biller, a neurologist at the hospital, said chemical substances which normally protect brain cells are reduced as the concentration of alcohol increases. Other components of brain cells were also cut as more alcohol was consumed. Perhaps surprisingly, the study found that men's and women's brains reacted to alcohol consumption the same way.
The team found the harmful effects of alcohol on the brain may be shortlived, but over time cells took longer to repair themselves. Dr Biller said: "Our follow-ups on the next day showed that the shifts in brain metabolites after moderate consumption of alcohol by healthy persons are completely reversible. "However, we assume that the brain's ability to recover from the effect of alcohol decreases or is eliminated as the consumption of alcohol increases. "The acute effects demonstrated in our study could possibly form the basis for the permanent brain damage that is known to occur in alcoholics. This should be clarified in future studies."
But no 'Beer Goggles': "A study found that alcohol actually has the opposite effect and made men see women as less attractive. Drink also makes no difference to a man's ability to guess a woman's age, the research found. Scientists asked a group of 240 men and women in bars and cafes to look at photos of women and comment on their age and attractiveness. Half the participants used in the experiment had consumed alcoholic drinks, with effects rated as "relaxed and benign", "blunted and disinhibited", "boisterous and over-expressive", and "unambiguously drunk". Some of the pictures of 10 young women aged 17 were digitally altered to make them appear younger or older. Make-up was also applied digitally to a number of images. The findings showed that alcohol reduced the ability of women to guess the age of the photo models, but not men. Both the effects of alcohol and prettifying a face with make-up had little effect on men's judgment.
Dr Vincent Egan, from the University of Leicester, said: "This study suggests that alcohol consumption and make-up use do not interfere with how old we perceive someone to be. "Another interesting finding was that overall participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared to the participants who hadn't drunk alcohol. This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of 'beer goggles'." Participants consistently over-estimated the age of both mature and immature faces by an average of 3.5 years.
Reporting their results in the British Journal of Psychology, the researchers wrote: "Although alcohol limited the processing of maturity cues in female observers, it had no effect on the age perceptions of males viewing female faces, suggesting male mate preferences are not easily disrupted." On a more serious note, they said the influence of alcohol should not be a mitigating factor in the case of a man accused of having sex with someone under-age. "Our study suggests that even heavy alcohol consumption does not interfere with age-perception tasks in men, so is not of itself an excuse for apparent mistaken age in cases of unlawful sex with a minor," they wrote."
- Richard Alleyne, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5182492/
Beer-goggles-idea-is-a-myth-claim-scientists.html
Beer-goggles-idea-is-a-myth-claim-scientists.html
0 Response to ""Alcohol: Fast Effect, But No Beer Goggles""
Post a Comment