Guest Blog: Heavy Alcohol Use Alters the Adolescent Brain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alcoholic_beverages.jpg Research undertaken by scientists at the Universiti Teknologi Mara has revealed that teens as young as 15 in Kuala Lumpur, are consuming alcohol. The study, entitled Alcoholism among youth in Kuala Lumpur, indicated that almost half the respondents aged 15 to 24 had consumed alcohol, with 28 per cent of the group aged only 17. Far from being a passing issue, the consumption of alcohol, especially in large amounts, has serious long-term consequences, with another important study showing that heavy drinking during adolescence changes the structure of adolescents’ brains. The second study mentioned above, carried out at the University of Eastern Finland and published in the journal Addiction, used magnetic resonance imaging to observe the brain structure of young, healthy adults who drank heavily and who had consumed large amounts of alcohol in their adolescence, comparing their results with those of similarly aged a...