The researchers estimated that participants reached an average blood alcohol level of .23 during their frivolities, about three times the legal driving limit and often enough to induce vomiting. Seventeen subjects also reported blacking out.
When the researchers examined students’ brain scans taken in the wake of their binge drinking, they found decreased volume in in the corpus callosum. This decrease exhibited a dose-dependent response with blood alcohol level – the higher a student’s blood alcohol level, the more their corpus callosum shrank in size. Concerningly, the corpus callosum, the largest white matter structure in the brain which enables communication between the left and right cerebral hemispheres, showed no signs of recovery five weeks after students’ 21st birthdays.
“Results from this study suggest that a single extreme drinking episode is enough to alter the brain morphometry of emerging adults a couple days after the drinking episode,” the researchers wrote.
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