Getting rat-faced
"Glass of wine aids memory" Auckland University Press release, 26 September 2007
"Don't forget: Drink a beer - or two - daily" Scientific American, 26 September 2007...
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Despite an awkwardly verbose title - Paradoxical Facilitatory Effect of Low-Dose Alcohol Consumption on Memory Mediated by NMDA Receptors - the September 2007 Journal of Neuroscience article received an awful lot of media attention.
After all, it did appear to carry such good news.
The research behind the article was not as complicated as its title might suggest. Rats given the equivalent of a daily glass of wine or two had enhanced memory.
But Mythbusters wonders whether things are ever that simple, especially when good news seems so obviously involved. One only has to look at the first word in the article's title to feel the beginnings of disquiet.
Neuroscientists Maggie Kalev of Auckland University and Ohio State University's Matthew During were the first to point out that their findings were paradoxical because many other studies have established alcohol can, in fact, stop memories being formed.
As well as giving some rats low doses of alcohol (comparable to two or three drinks a day), Kalev and During gave other rats high doses (equal to six or seven drinks a day). Later, they tested the rats for their recall of neutral memories, such as remembering objects, and unpleasant memories, such as mild electric shocks. The rats given low levels of alcohol had better recall of neutral memories than the control group.
The second paradoxical finding was that, at the same time, sustained heavy alcohol consumption inhibited the ability of the rats' brains to create new cells, and increased memories linked to heightened emotion. This led the researchers to comment that drinking to forget "could actually... promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."
Maggie Kalev added that the research only lasted eight weeks, "and is certainly not a recommendation for a lifestyle of moderate drinking".
For the researchers, the real importance of the study was that it identified receptors that help form memories, which may lead to treatments for memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
For Mythbusters, however, the story is yet another in the continuing debate about the good and bad effects of alcohol. November brought highprofile media coverage of an international diet and cancer review highlighting links between alcohol and some types of cancers. Other stories cover research associating health benefits with alcohol.
Mythbusters' point is that the media often fails to distinguish between different types of drinking patterns when reporting on alcohol's effects, as STATS (one of our favourite websites) found when reviewing media stories on the diet-cancer link. Regular, moderate drinking, which reduces heart disease in some groups, has very different health effects to binge drinking or sustained, heavy alcohol use.
Mythbusters believes it's important to look behind the first headline. What kinds of drinking are being studied, and in which groups? And how does the media coverage differ from what the researchers actually said or wrote?
Meanwhile, the research and the debate around the effects of alcohol on humans will need to continue, and Mythbusters suggests the jury is still out on whether moderate alcohol intake is always a good thing. Rats!
A glass of wine aids memory press release
Don't forget: drink a beer or two daily
