Moderate Drinking Increases Flashbacks

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The amount of alcohol you drink before a traumatic event could have a direct influence on how much impact that memory has on your mental health in the future.

In a new study, participants drank either alcohol or a placebo and then performed a virtual reality task that examined how a past event was stored in the memory. The participants were also shown a video of serious car accidents and recorded the number of times they had a flashback to the footage over the next seven days.

Those who drank a small amount of alcohol had trouble remembering things about the event that depended on context, while they had no trouble recalling a visual "snapshot" of the event. Higher amounts of alcohol caused both types of memory to be reduced.

Study authors say moderate alcohol consumption exaggerates the reduction of contextual memory, the type of memory that stores the context of an event. When this type of memory is reduced, the other type of memory -- which stores a visual "snapshot" of the event -- is re-experienced more often, causing more flashbacks. Similarly, if a person drinks heavily, both types of memory are affected, leading to fewer flashbacks and trouble remembering the event altogether.

"Many people who experience a personally traumatic event such as rape or a road traffic accident have consumed alcohol beforehand," lead researcher James Bisby, of University College London's Department of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, was quoted as saying. "For the first time, this research gives us an idea of how being under the influence of alcohol might contribute to our well being later on." |

Source: Biological Psychiatry, published online March 2, 2010

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