Alcohol Effects On Memory

Alcohol, despite being consumed lightly or chronically has an effect on memory. Alcohol has many effects on memory and whilst some could be less damaging than others, the risk on memory still needs to be acknowledged.

Alcohol is a universally consumed drug and has commonly known damaging effects on memory (Wetherill, Schnyer, Fromme, 2012). The situations, movements and consequences that an individual experiences that are usually stored in ones memory becomes impaired one is unable to encode memories whilst one is inebriated.

Due to the likelyhood of having significant effects on an individuals memory, alcohol needs to be taken with caution to minimise behavioural and psycholigcal effects (Molnár, Boha, Czigler, & Gaál, 2010).

In accordance

with the above, this paper will outline the effects of alcohol on the memory with relevance to an individuals memory processes and their attenion, the effects of alcohol on working and episodic memory, and the effects on short and long term memory.

The effect of alcohol on memory is a public health issue and it is important to correctly understand how alcohol affects ones memory.

Alcohol affects and impairs the memory process of encoding, storage and retrieval.

It is a common fact that alcohol impacts attention, impairment and cognitive memory and that intoxication also leads to a substantial lessening of peripheral information during the memory process of encoding (Roos af Hjelmsäter, Söderpalm Gordh, Fahlke, Hildebrand Karlén, & Granhag, 2015). Alike, alcohol reduces the amount of attention an intoxicated individual can bring forth to the central information (Harvey, Kneller, Campbell, 2013).

According to Ray, Bates and Bly (2004), the encoding and storage stages of memory are more vulnerable to alcohol than the retrieval memory stage is. This is believed to be because when alcohol damages encoding of information and the storage of information, then intoxication deficiency will also be detected in the explicit memory process.

In reference, it is evident that alcohol lessens attention, which makes encoding harder, and damages the memory from alliancing (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al.,

2015).

Alcohol affects ones ability to pay attention to important information of events and experiences. This is due to the idea that alcohol delays the attention of an individual.
It is believed that attention has an affect after alcohol consumption as alcohol decreases the fixations made to salient regions on the visual memory; it also limits the amount of information that can be administrated through the perceptual span and it may also disturb the method of switching from on attentional span to another (Harvey, Kneller, Campbell, 2013).

In regards to the effect of alcohol on attention, intoxicated individuals are so engaged within a central stimuli that they become unaware of what is happening around or to them, especially in difference to their sober acquaintances (Harvey, Kneller, Campbell, 2013).

Alcohol impairs the ability to encode and recall from many elements of memory and interrupts how the intoxicated individual’s function.

Alcohol damages memory and lowers attention during the encoding process which interrupts the alliance of memory phases. (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., 2015).

With examples of working memory, and episodic memory, it is evident that alcohol undoubtedly effects memory.

An outstanding memory function that enables you to correctly function each day is working memory, and when an individual is inebriated this memory undeniably becomes impaired. It is plausible that alcohol intake worsens the attainment of new information and forms interference amongst ones memory Molnár et al., (2010), therefore delaying ones capacity to reach their working

memory.
A study conducted by Finn, Justus, Mazas and Steinmetz (1999, as cited in (Saults, Cowan, Moreno, 2007) discovered that blood alcohols concentrations rate of 0.07% and 0.09% lessened the capacity of the working memory to work, however, only in individuals with an elevated baseline working memory. This clarifies those different areas of the working memory display different effects after alcohol consumption (Saults, Cowan, Moreno, 2007).
With the intake of alcohol the episodic memory becomes damaged due to the lesions on the frontal lobe cortex Molnár et al., (2010).
Episodic memory process are susceptible to defiency by alcohol, with undoubtedly the higher the dose, the more vulnerability of episodic memory impairment (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., 2015).
Alcohol restricts the individual’s natural skill of fusing memories of the past from episodic memory in direction of forming a mixture of episodic future thoughts (Paraskevaides et al., 2010). This means the intoxicated individual does not have the ability to bring forth experiences from the past (Paraskevaides et al., 2010). It is also interesting to note that memory recall for women is considerably better than the recall of men (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., 2015).

Alcohol has effects on an individual’s short-term memory and their long- term memory. How this can fluctuate is due to the amount of alcohol an individual consumes and how their body can handle that alcohol.
The effect of alcohol to the short-term memory can bring forth fragmentary blackouts, which are described as partial memory losses that an individual that has experienced whilst intoxicated (Wetherill, Schnyer, Fromme, 2012). These blackouts can be solved with provision of related cues (Wetherill, Schnyer, Fromme, 2012). This demonstrates that information encoding and storage during alcohol consumption is well recalled during intoxication, however, free recall performance when an individual is inebriated is impaired, compared to when sober. (Ray, Bates and Bly, 2004).
Short- term memory effects can be divided by gender too. An experiment by Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., (2015) gave the same dose of alcohol to both genders. It was found within that study that women have a comparatively higher blood alcohol concentration level that impairs their short-term memories much easier than it does in men.
In long-term memory experiences and events are stored, however, alcohol affects the cognitive thought processes to recall this information.
Acute ethanol ingestion affects cognitive functioning that is linked with behavioural and psychological long-term consequences (Saults, Cowan, Moreno, 2007).
Recurrent contact with alcohol can worsen an individual’s ability to recall from their long-term memory as well as alcohol provoked blackouts establish a whole long-term memory loss during the time of intoxication (Verster, Van Duin, Volkerts, Schreuder, Verbaten, 2003; (Wetherill, Schnyer, Fromme, 2012).
This is because alcohol has a longer lasting morphological and performance effect (Molnár et al., 2010).
It is also known that alcohol has an impact on short and long term memory at the same time. Gender differents also derive. Women have a greater capacity to suspectbility of short and long term memory that manages to damage cogntive performance more than men (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., 2015).
It is also important to note that environmental contact can also help trigger these short and long term memory effects. Verster et al., (2003) also discovered the effects of alcohol. When teenagers go drinking they have mistakenly reported having seen alcohol related words in a drinking setting, compared to non-alcoholic words (Verster et al., 2003). This is due to the environmental setting around the teenagers where numerous amounts of TV ads prior to the event had been playing alcohol related segments.

Effects of alcohol on the memory have damaging results as alcohol impairs ones ability to encode, store and recall information and also weakens one ability to focus on their cogntive memory. Alcohol also lessens the use of peripheral information during memory processes and impacts the ability to provide attention. It needs to be understood that these risks can lead to behavioural and psychology damages in the memory.
A limitation to be aware of is each individual has different characteristics towards their experiences, their dirnking tolerance, age and health, so many studies cannot do an overall result in some areas as some results only relate to the people who participated in the study.
As for recommendation for further research, looking into age and health related effects will strengthen the knowledge of alcohol effects on the memory.
Nevertheless, if these effects are not understood correctly, intoxicated individuals can suffer from numerous memory effects.