Alcohol Binge Drinking and Executive Functioning during Adolescent Brain Development

Alcohol consumption in adolescents causes negative effects on familiar, social, academic life as well as neurocognitive alterations. The binge drinking (BD) pattern of alcohol is characterized by the alternation of episodes of heavy drinking in a short interval of time, and periods of abstinence, a practice that can result in important brain alterations; even more than regular alcohol consumption. The prefrontal cortex, which acts as neural support for the executive processes, is particularly affected by alcohol; however, not all studies are in agreement about how BD alcohol consumption affects executive functioning. Some research has found that alcohol consumption in adolescence does not significantly affect executive functioning while others found it does. It is possible that these discrepancies could be due to the history of alcohol consumption, that is, at what age the subjects started drinking. The aim of our study is to assess the performance on executive functioning tasks of thirteen to nineteen year old adolescents according to their pattern of alcohol consumption. We hypothesize that BD adolescents will perform worse than non-BD subjects in tasks that evaluate executive functions, and these differences will increase depending on how long they have been consuming alcohol. Three hundred and twenty two students (48.14% females; age range 13 to 22 years; mean aged 16.7 ± 2.59) participated in the study; all of them had begun drinking at the age of thirteen. Participant were divided into three groups, according to their age range (13-15, 16-18, and 19-22) and divided according to their pattern of alcohol consumption (BD and Control groups). Then, the subjects were evaluated with neuropsychological tasks that assess executive functions like working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility or self-control among others. The entire sample showed a normal improvement in their executive performance, but this improvement was more stable and robust in the control group. Regarding the executive performance among age groups, control subjects only obtained better results than BDs in the 19-22 year old range, whereas the performance was quite similar at younger ages. Considering that all the BD subjects started drinking at the same age (13 years old), it is possible that