A little googling yielded this:
"Chronic alcohol abuse kills brain cells in the front of the brain, which affect planning, and
social interactions and inhibitions. "
from here:
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/...in_damage.html
"Compared to students who drink moderately or not at all, frequent drinkers
may never be able to catch up in adulthood, since alcohol inhibits systems crucial for storing new information as long-term memories and makes it difficult to immediately remember what was just learned.
"Additionally, those who binge once a week or increase their drinking from age 18 to 24 may have problems attaining the goals of young adulthood—marriage, educational attainment, employment, and financial independence. And rather than "outgrowing" alcohol use, young abusers are significantly more likely to have drinking problems as adults."
from here:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/9416.html
"The good news is that most alcoholics with cognitive impairment show at least some improvement in brain structure and functioning within a year of abstinence, though some people take much longer (35–37). Clinicians must consider a variety of treatment methods to help people stop drinking and to recover from alcohol–related brain impairments, and tailor these treatments to the individual patient. "
Very long informative article here:
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm
"'This study shows that, even with prolonged sobriety, alcoholics show deficits in visuoperception and frontal executive function,' said Sullivan. 'Furthermore, although alcoholics were able to perform a visuoperceptual learning task at the level of controls, how they performed the task was very different from the way controls performed the task. That is, the underlying component processes used to execute this task were different.'
"'Unable to invoke normal visuoperceptual abilities, alcoholics relied on a more complex cognitive system to perform the visuoperceptual learning task than required by controls. The potential problem with this is that if that same system – frontal executive functions – is needed for a competing task, alcoholics may be at a disadvantage because that system would otherwise be engaged, for example, driving, or work-related demands that require sequencing, judgment, decision making, complex tasks requiring organization, planning, and visuospatial information, like dentistry, or using heavy machinery in construction.'"
from here:
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/brain/a/blacer041115.htm
This last one is so interesting because I have observed this with my bf many times. He cannot seem to "picture" things-- how to put them together, how they are going to fit. For example, he was trying to put my rolling walker in the back of my car-- it has a hatchback. It was instantly clear to me which way it would fit in there, but he tried it five or six ways before he figured out the way that worked. This sort of thing has happened many, many times in our relationship. "That's not going to fit!" he will say. "Yes, it will," I say. And it does. This might just be a guy thing... like the way a guy will say, "There's no more room in the freezer," when there still is room, but he can't see it.
"Researchers know that many alcoholics continue to experience cognitive deficits even after long-term abstinence from alcohol. Results from a study in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research confirm that motor deficits also continue to plague abstinent alcoholics."
from this article, which explains the experiment:
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/demen...acer030417.htm
If this brain damage/alcohol topic is of interest, there are a ton of references here:
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/brain...onsumption.htm
Okay, it's a slow evening, and I'm just googling around...