HHS HealthBeat (April 08, 2009)

Fearless alcohol

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Can alcohol give people courage? A researcher thinks alcohol instead can reduce the brain’s ability to detect fear.

Jodi Gilman of the National Institutes of Health examined that. She and her colleagues gave people doses of alcohol or a fake substitute intravenously, and then watched their brain images as they were shown pictures of faces expressing fear.

Normally, fear-response centers react when people see other people being afraid. But Gilman says that’s not what happened after the volunteers got the alcohol:

[Jodi Gilman speaks] "None of this increased brain activity to the fearful faces was detected. So this indicates that, during intoxication, threat detecting brain circuits couldn’t tell the difference between a threatening and a non-threatening stimulus."

Gilman says this may explain the impaired judgment that can come from drinking.

The study was in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss

Last revised: April, 09 2009