I just came across another dubious-sounding study touting the benefits of alcohol consumption; this time, the claim is that drinking alcohol can help the brain remember more than it did previously. The idea behind the University of Texas at Austin study is a little complicated—the researchers believe that alcohol only helps certain areas of the brain remember through neuro-plasticity, which is the re-wiring of the brain.
Again, this study doesn’t sound as life-changing as you might think when originally reading the headline. The author of the paper on the study—submitted to the Journal of Neuroscience—admits that alcohol can make you forget where your car is or certain names. However, he believes that the study demonstrates that the ethanol in alcohol “primes the brain for learning.”
According to the Science Daily Journal, the number of things we learn from alcohol is actually fairly limited and doesn’t seem all that helpful.
“Among the things we learn is that drinking alcohol is rewarding. We also learn that going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods and listening to certain kinds of music are rewarding. The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more "potentiated" the various synapses become and the more we crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.”