Drink to your memory, experts suggest

Aside from the obvious health risks, drinking an excessive amount of alcohol can often lead to memory loss and a sore head the next morning.

Now, however, a team of researchers from the University of Texas, the University of Kentucky and the University of Maryland has found that for people aged 60 or over, who do not have dementia, the light consumption of alcohol is linked to higher episodic memory - the ability to recall memories of events - as well as larger hippocampi brain volume, a region of the brain that is critical for episodic memory.

The study, in which data from over 660 patients was analysed, also found that moderate alcohol consumption is linked with a larger volume in the hippocampus.

In similar studies, involving animals, researchers have linked moderate alcohol consumption to the preservation of hippocampi volume by promoting the generation of new nerve cells in the hippocampus, while exposing the brain to moderate amounts of alcohol may increase the release of brain chemicals involved with cognitive, or information processing, functions.

“There were no significant differences in cognitive functioning and regional brain volumes during late-life according to reported mid-life alcohol consumption status,” said lead author Brian Downer.

“This may be due to the fact that adults who are able to continue consuming alcohol into old age are healthier, and therefore have higher cognition and larger regional brain volumes, than people who had to decrease their alcohol consumption due to unfavourable health outcomes,” Downer said.

In similar news, a team of scientists from Flanders Institute of Technology (FIT), the University of Leuvenand and the academic research initiative NERF in Belgium recently discovered why beer and wine tastes so good to humans, and to fruit flies.