RESUMENAntecedentes. El consumo elevado de alcohol por parte de jóvenes durante el fin de semana se está convirtiendo en un problema social y familiar importante pero también en un problema de salud considerable. El consumo abusivo ocasiona daños en el cerebro pero con diferente distribución, ya que la corteza prefrontal (CP) es una de las regiones que resulta más afectada.Objetivos. Hay numerosos estudios sobre los efectos del consumo crónico de alcohol. Nuestro objetivo es determinar los déficits neuropsicológicos en la actividad prefrontal ocasionados por el consumo abusivo de alcohol de manera intermitente en adolescentes.Método. Se realizó una evaluación neuropsicológica a los sujetos para valorar su rendimiento en diversas tareas que implican a la CP. Participaron 62 sujetos (edad media 18.82±1.099) distribuidos en tres grupos: 1) Jóvenes que consumían alcohol de manera abusiva durante los fines de semana (ALE); 2) Jóve-nes que consumían más moderadamente durante los fines de semana (ALM); y 3) Jóvenes que no consumían alcohol (CTR).Resultados y Conclusiones. Los resultados indican que el consumo abusivo intermitente de alcohol por parte de jóvenes, tanto de manera elevada como moderada, provoca un peor rendimiento en tareas neuropsicológicas como Dígitos, Corsi o Stroop, las cuales dependen de un correcto funcionamiento de la CP. Nuestros resultados apoyan la idea de que este patrón de consumo provoca un deterioro neurocognitivo y neuroconductual similar en muchos aspectos al observado en bebedores crónicos. Además, el consumo abusivo de fin de semana por parte de adolescentes y jóvenes incrementa el riesgo de desarrollar dependencia alcohólica y otras patologías en etapas posteriores de la vida. ABSTRACTBackground. High alcohol consumption by young people at weekends is a public health problem of considerable social and family importance. Chronic alcohol intake causes structural changes in the central nervous system, though the effects are not uniform throughout the brain. The prefrontal cortex (PC) has been reported to be one of the regions most sensitive to prolonged alcohol ingestion.Objectives. The effects of chronic ethanol exposure have been extensively studied. Our aim is to identify the neuropsychological deficits in PC function induced by intermittent heavy alcohol drinking in young adults.Methods. Neuropsychological assessment was carried out on participants to examine their performance in PC-dependent tasks. 62 subjects (mean age 18.82±1.099) were assigned to one of three categories: 1) Those reporting heavy binge drinking of alcohol at weekends (ALE); 2) Those reporting moderate binge drinking of alcohol at weekends (ALM); and 3) Those reporting no alcohol intake (CTR).Results and Conclusions. The findings indicate that intermittent alcohol binge drinking, either heavy or moderate, in young people results in poorer performance in neuropsychological tasks such as Digits, Corsi or Stroop, which depend on correct PC functioning. Our results support the claim that the binge pattern of exposure t...

Adolescence is a period of ongoing brain maturation characterized by hierarchical changes in the functional and structural networks. For this reason, the young brain is particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol. Nowadays, binge drinking is a pattern of alcohol consumption increasingly prevalent among adolescents. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the evolution of the functional and anatomical connectivity of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in young binge drinkers along two years. Magnetoencephalography signal during eyes closed resting state as well as Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) were acquired twice within a 2-year interval from 39 undergraduate students (22 controls, 17 binge drinkers) with neither personal nor family history of alcoholism. The group comparison showed that, after maintaining a binge drinking pattern along at least two years, binge drinkers displayed an increased brain connectivity of the DMN in comparison with the control group. On the other hand, the structural connectivity did not show significant differences neither between groups nor over the time. These findings point out that a continued pattern of binge drinking leads to functional alterations in the normal brain maturation process, even before anatomical changes can be detected.

Binge Drinking (BD) is a pattern of intermittent intensive alcohol intake which has spread among young adults over the last decades. Adolescence constitutes a critical neuromaturation period in which the brain is particularly sensitive to the effects of alcohol. However, little is known about how BD affects the brain activity. This study aimed to characterize the brain's functional organization in BD and non-BD young population by means of analyzing functional connectivity (FC) and relative power spectra (PS) profiles measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG) during eyes-closed resting state. Our sample composed 73 first-year university students (35 BDs and 38 controls). Results showed that the BD subjects displayed a decreased alpha FC in frontal-parietal regions, and conversely, an enhanced FC in the delta, theta and beta bands in fronto-temporal networks. Besides the FC differences, the BD group showed a decreased PS within alpha range and an increased PS within theta range in the brain's occipital region. These differences in FC and PS measurements provide new evidence of the neurophysiological alterations related to the alcohol neurotoxicity and could represent an initial sign of an anomalous neural activity caused by a BD pattern of alcohol consumption during youth.

Alcohol binge drinking is a pattern of heavy alcohol consumption that is increasingly practiced by adolescents and young adults. Evidence indicates that alcohol binges induce peripheral inflammation and an exacerbated neuroimmune response that may participate in alcohol-induced cognitive/behavioral dysfunctions. Here, we recruited 20-year-old male and female university students who were identified as binge drinkers for at least 2 years. Compared with controls, young alcohol binge drinkers had elevated levels of blood endotoxin and upregulated markers of the toll-like receptor 4/NF-κB inflammatory pathway in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, together with pro-inflammatory cytokine/chemokine release, oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation. These changes positively correlate with the estimated blood alcohol levels achieved during alcohol binge intoxication and negatively correlate with the time elapsed from the last alcohol consumption. The immune/inflammatory changes were more prominent in female drinkers, who showed elevated levels of alcohol danger-associated molecules, such as high mobility group box 1, indicating that there are sex-related differences in the peripheral inflammatory response to alcohol. In contrast, cortisol levels were decreased in alcohol binge drinkers. Finally, higher levels of inflammatory markers, mainly monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, as well as LPS, high mobility group box 1, toll-like receptor 4, IL-6 and ciclooxygenase-2, correlated with worse scores on episodic memory and executive functioning tasks in female binge drinkers but not in male binge drinkers. These results emphasize possible risky consequences of alcohol use in binge episodes during young adulthood and call attention to sex-related differences in the alcohol-induced immune/inflammatory and neurocognitive responses.

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