Why do some people drink too much? Their ‘brakes’ may not work, study says
There is usually a point when someone who is drinking decides to stop — but for others, they continue to drink and drink, according to a University of California Santa Barbara press release.
For those people who continue to consume alcohol, “nothing — not the risk of losing control or the threat of nausea and dizziness — is enough to put the brakes on their drinking,” the university said.
And that could be because of a faulty brain “brake,” according to a new study by a UCSB research team. The study’s results were explained in the university’s press release.
Neuroscientist Karen Szumlinski, along with her team, “uncovered a mechanism in a small brain structure called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis,” according to the university.
The “bed nucleus of the stria terminalis” — BNST, for short — “contains a ‘brake’ mechanism, an adaptive response to limit alcohol consumption,” the Feb. 20 release states.
It’s that “brake” in our brains that helps “sense alcohol’s negative effects and modulates the urge to drink,” UCSB said. “When it doesn’t function properly, however, we lose the ability to perceive when we’ve had enough — or, perhaps, one too many — and we continue to drink.”
How might you know if your brain “brake” is working?
“If a little bit of intoxication is making you nervous, the BNST is doing its job,” Szumlinski said, according to UCSB. Her study on the BNST was published in The Journal of Neuroscience on Feb. 8.
The “pedal” that pumps the BNST is a protein called Homer2, according to the release.
To study how Homer2 worked on the brain “brake,” researchers studied mice that have a certain mutation, Insider reported. The mutation stops the Homer2 protein from reacting with enzyme ERK, which helps activate the process. That mutation appears to “cut” the BNST brake, Szumlinski said, according to Insider.
“When they manipulated Homer2 in mouse models the animals stopped binge drinking,” UCSB said in the news release. “When they reduced the expression of Homer2 in the BNST, however, the animals drank (a lot) more.”
Szumlinski told the university that the BNST, along with the protein and enzyme, may help “reduce or at least curb your alcohol consumption” — when functioning properly.
“But if any kink happens in that little bit of signaling there, you lose the brakes,” she said. “Your brake line has been cut, and now you exhibit uncontrolled drinking behavior.”
She did note, however, that this is what happens in “drunk lab mice,” and it has not been tested in drunk humans.
“The BNST is a very small structure that is currently hard to image in humans and of course, we can’t manipulate its function,” Szumlinski said, according to Insider.
And while there’s a leap between drunk mice and humans, she told Insider that it’s an important connection.
“How we perceive how drunk we are is going to influence our subsequent drinking,” Szumlinski said, according to UCSB. “Although their behavior is telling us they are completely intoxicated, maybe they don’t feel hammered. Or maybe when they’re feeling drunk, they don’t perceive that as a bad thing ... And so presumably that might have something to do with BNST glutamate function.”