According to a recent study done by researchers at Vanderbilt University, chronic drinkers will have to deal with many brain deficits as a result of their heavy drinking. Alcoholics can perform the same functions as non-drinkers, which was demonstrated in a simple exercise involving finger tapping but their brains have to work much harder to do so.

Chronic drinking is linked to brain abnormalities in function, metabolism and structure and a consequence of these deficits is destruction in motor functioning. The study used fMRI to test a finger exercise and discovered that the cerebellum and frontal lobe activities were not as incorporated in the brains of the alcoholic, according to the study. Research assistant professor of Radiology & Radiological Sciences, Dr. Baxter Rogers, said the relationship between the two brain parts was weaker in alcoholics even up to a week after they’d stopped drinking.

Rogers and his colleagues used the fMRI method to examine the brain because it measures brain functions in a non-invasive and painless way and can identify specific regions of the brain that are involved in carrying out tasks and that are affected by disease. They examined alcoholic patients after an abstinence of five to seven days and after withdrawal signs were not present anymore and also examined healthy patients who were not alcoholics.

The results showed that alcoholics can produce the same amount of finger taps as the non-alcoholics but they had to use different parts of their brain to do so. Rogers says it suggests alcoholics must compensate for the injury to their brain and need to expend more amounts of energy or at least use a different response in their brain to provide the same normal outcome.

These types of studies will help us to better understand how alcoholics brain circuits are rewired because of their disease and we hope to one day have new approaches to healing and rehabilitating them because of their brain dysfunctions, said Vanderbilt researchers.