A new study from Johns Hopkins University has shown that drinking too much alcohol over a long time can cause lasting damage to the brain, especially in areas that help with decision-making.
This may explain why people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) often struggle to make good choices—even after they stop drinking.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, used rats to explore how alcohol affects the brain over time. Researchers gave the rats large amounts of alcohol every day for one month…
After nearly three months without alcohol—which is equal to several years in human time—the scientists tested how well the rats could think and make decisions.
They used a task where the rats had to choose between two levers. One lever gave rewards more often, but every few minutes, the better lever changed. To get the most rewards, the rats had to pay attention and adjust their choices quickly.
The healthy rats did well—they noticed the changes and chose the better lever. But the rats that had been exposed to alcohol did much worse. They had trouble adjusting and kept making poor choices.
This task was harder than other tasks used in past studies, and it better shows how real-life decisions work. It required memory, learning, and quick thinking—skills that people use in everyday life. The rats that had drunk alcohol just couldn’t keep up.
Brain scans helped explain why. The alcohol-exposed rats had weaker activity in a part of the brain called the dorsomedial striatum. This area helps control flexible thinking and decision-making. The damage in this brain region made it harder for the rats to change their behavior based on new information.
One surprising finding was that the brain damage and poor thinking lasted a long time—even after the rats had been sober for months.
This suggests that alcohol can cause lasting brain changes that don’t go away easily. It may also help explain why it’s so hard for some people to stay sober—they may still have trouble making healthy choices long after they stop drinking.
Interestingly, these effects were only found in male rats in this study. The researchers don’t think females are safe from alcohol’s harm, but they believe the male and female brain may respond differently. They plan to study this more in the future.
The team also wants to explore how other brain regions work together with the dorsomedial striatum and what causes the differences between male and female brains after heavy drinking.
This study helps us better understand how alcohol affects the brain in the long term. It shows that the damage doesn’t end when the drinking stops. Even after a person becomes sober, their brain may still struggle to make good decisions. Learning more about these brain changes could lead to better ways to treat alcohol addiction and prevent relapse.
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