Alcohol-damaged brains 'recruit' new brain regions to perform si...( Chronic alcoholism is known to dam...),Health

• Chronic alcoholism is known to damage the brain's cerebellum and frontal lobes.
• Researchers used brain imaging technology to watch abstinent alcoholics perform a simple motor task.
• Alcoholics performed the task, finger tapping, slower than non-alcoholics.
• Alcoholic brains also recruited other-than-normally activated regions of the brain to perform the task.

Researchers know that many alcoholics continue to experience cognitive deficits even after long-term abstinence from alcohol. Results from a study in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research confirm that motor deficits also continue to plague abstinent alcoholics. Furthermore, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to "watch" brain regions involved in a simple motor task - finger tapping - the study has found that the brain appears to compensate for alcohol-induced damage by "recruiting" other, unexpected brain regions.

"We know from neuropathological studies that the two parts of the brain that are most often damaged in chronic alcoholics are the cerebellum and the frontal lobes," said Peter R. Martin, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, director of the Vanderbilt Addiction Center at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and corresponding author for the study. "Rapid self-paced motor activity such as finger tapping is a function of the motor cortex, the posterior part of the frontal lobe, which initiates a stimulus to the muscles of the hand, that is then coordinated by interplay between the cerebellum and the frontal lobes. In other words, I reasoned that there would probably be abnormalities in activation of these regions in alcoholics during finger tapping."

While undergoing MRI, two groups of participants performed repetitive, self-paced index finger-tapping exercises: eight (7 male, 1 female) alcohol-dependent patients after approximately two weeks of abstinence; and nine (7 females, 2 m
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14-Apr-2003