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- Some people seem to be able to drink more alcohol than others.
- They are still drunk, but that does not seem to stop them from drinking more and more.
- According to new research, this could be due to the fact that an area of the brain is not functioning properly.
- Due to mutations, some people may not have a "brake" on the brain that prevents them from drinking too much when they have reached their limit.
- The area has been identified in mice, but researchers are searching databases to find human models – a difficult task because searches must be on dead bodies.
What is your consumption limit before you stop? Five? Ten? For some people, they feel they can continue to send them off indefinitely, even if they start to stagger and run their words.
According to a new study from the University of California at Santa Barbara, this could be due to the lack of "brake" in some people's brains, which means that they do not have the ability to know when they have reached their limit.
Most people have a mechanism called the stria terminalis bed nucleus (BNST), and this helps us to feel the effects of alcohol and thus manage the amount we can drink. However, if it does not work properly, people may not realize that they have enough and continue to drink.
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, identified the area in the brain of mouse models. It is connected to both the amygdala, which controls the response to combat or flight, and the nucleus accumbens, associated with a reward.
Read more: Why the guilt of a hangover or the "fear of beer" after a heavy night of drinking
The mice were created by Paul F. Worley at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to have mutations in a certain protein. When the sites of this protein can not react with an enzyme (ERK), due to the mutation or the artificial blocking of its activity, the "brakes" to the overconsumption seem to have been cut, said the principal investigator Karen Szumlinski to INSIDER.
In other words, the mice carrying the mutation did not stop drinking, even when they were intoxicated.
Szumlinski is a neuroscientist who studies excessive drinking and the fact that overconsumption can cause stress in the brain. She explained that it was a step forward to move from one drunk mouse to another, but important links were established.
"Our perception of our state of intoxication will influence our subsequent consumption," she said. "Although their behavior tells us that they are completely intoxicated, maybe they do not feel hammered." Or maybe when they feel drunk, they do not perceive that as a bad thing."
She said the team was constantly reviewing the databases of these specific mutations in human genes, but that the only way to test BNST changes was to use the tissues of the deceased patients.
"The BNST is a very small structure that is currently difficult to imagine in humans and we can not of course manipulate the function," she said.
"At the moment, we are turning to murine models of genetic and environmental predisposition to excessive occasional consumption of alcohol to see whether there may be a link between vulnerability to alcoholism (" bad brakes ") and the ERK-dependent signaling function in the BNST."
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