Drinking alcohol can actually improve memory, who knew that? We’ve all been there. After a swell night at Quilox, Club 57 or a damn hot party on a friday night and you’re battling to remember anything you did or said. So what’s happening in your brain? Well according to reports, alcohol doesn’t really make you forget anything.
This is why
When you get high drinking, a blackout occurs and this only happens when you booze well over your limit just like that friend of yours that over drinks whenever he sees free beer.
Alcohol is considered a depressant, and well depressants are known to impair memory acquisition. When someone blacks out, it means that while they appear to be awake, alert and intoxicated, their brain is actually not making long-term memories of what’s happening. At that point the brain holds strong the information stored before but cannot store any more info. If a person experiencing a blackout is asked what happened to them just 10 minutes ago, they will have no idea. But a new study suggests that a few drinks might actually strengthen your memory.
In a recently concluded study, 88 participants were split into two groups and given a word-learning task to complete. One group was told to drink as much as they want, while the other was told not to drink at all.
The next day participants were asked to perform the tasks again—and the drinkers performed much better than the non-drinkers. Researchers concluded that “alcohol blocks the learning of new information and therefore the brain has more resources available to lay down other recently learned information into long-term memory.”
While researchers were quick to caution drinkers about taking this study too much to heart, at least we can justify that a few beers on Friday night isn’t a bad idea after all.
