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Teen Drinking-Worse then you thought.
Several studies released this year suggest teen drinking may cause more neurological damage than was previously thought. Contrary to the notion that the brain is fully developed by age 16 or 17, the new studies have found that significant development happens until the age of 21 and heavy drinking by teen-agers may inhibit that development.
The recent research suggests that teens who binge drink may do damage to their memory and learning abilities by severely hampering the development of the hippocampus. A survey by the Harvard School of Public Health has found that 44 percent of college students are binge drinkers and 74 percent say they binged in high school.
These studies indicate that teen binge drinking can lead to poor performance in school, difficulty in simple math or the inability to read a map. They also dispel the notion that a person could sustain heavy drinking for several years before causing neurological damage. Adolescent alcohol abuse and dependence may prove to be more damaging than alcoholism in adulthood by killing brain cells in the hippocampus, blocking brain receptors that form memories and causing protracted neurological impairments, the researchers say.
..an excerpt from Monitor on Psychology
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