Alcohol's Link to Memory Loss
November 27th 2008 03:27
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From: The Wall Street Journal
Q: I enjoyed your article "Forgetting Has Its Benefits" (Nov. 11). Some friends and I were just having a discussion about memory loss due to alcohol. In particular, do people really forget things they did when they were drinking? That was the most popular excuse for stupid things people did in college, if my memory serves correctly.
A: It's not just an excuse -- however much drinkers might need one. According to the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse, just one or two drinks can impair a person's memory, and the more they drink, the more their memory is likely to be impaired.
In particular, alcohol seems to interfere with how memories are stored. Studies have shown that people who are intoxicated can often recall words, names or events for a few minutes -- say, enough to function at a cocktail party -- but they will have difficulty storing that information into long-term memory, which often takes an awareness of its meaning or significance.
Drinking heavily, quickly, on an empty stomach or in an emotional state can induce blackouts, a more severe form in which the ability to remember events that transpire while intoxicated is completely blocked. Researchers once thought blackouts happened mainly to severe alcoholics, but they are increasingly recognizing that they occur to "social drinkers," too, particularly binging college students. In surveys, students reported learning later that they did things like having unprotected sex, engaging in vandalism or spending excessively -- during blackouts that they had no memory of. In one study, some students were so frightened by their last blackout that they changed their drinking habits.
Q: "Forgetting Has Its Benefits" was an interesting article, but it neglected to credit the seminal research of Sherlock Holmes. See "A Study in Scarlet" for his discussion of the same point. -- J.D.
A: I generally don't regard fictional characters as reliable sources. But in this case, Holmes does give a fascinating discourse on forgetting in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel. He has just met Dr. Watson, who is astounded when Holmes says he intends to forget that the Earth travels around the sun.
"You see," [Holmes] explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out ... Now the skillful workman ... will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. ... Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
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Well done.