When dealing with white matter. White matter is tissue in the brain that facilitates communication to other parts of the brain. According to a new study, women who are recovering from alcohol abuse regain their white matter faster than men who get sober. Damn. Read more below.
Over time, alcoholism results in the loss of white matter, which is brain tissue that facilitates communication among different areas of the brain. Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the VA Boston Healthcare System found alcoholic women who stop drinking can regain their white matter faster than men who get sober.
“We believe that many of the cognitive and emotional deficits observed in people with chronic alcoholism, including memory problems and flat affect, are related to disconnections that result from a loss of white matter,” said the study’s leader, Susan Mosher Ruiz, a postdoctoral research scientist in the neuropsychology laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine.
The researchers examined brain scans of 42 formerly alcoholic men and women who drank heavily for more than five years, and compared them to scans from 42 nonalcoholics. The scans revealed those who drank longer had smaller white matter volume. The researchers noted the decrease in white matter among the men was observed in the corpus callosum, while the effect was observed in the women’s cortical white matter regions.
The study also found that the number of daily drinks had a strong impact on alcoholic women. The researchers noted the white matter volume loss was 1.5 percent to 2 percent for each additional daily drink. They also found an 8 percent to 10 percent increase in the size of the brain ventricles, which play a protective role in the brain. As white matter dies, cerebrospinal fluid fills the space in the ventricles.
In assessing the recovery of the men’s white matter, the researchers found the corpus callosum recovered at a rate of 1 percent per year for each year of abstinence from alcohol.
For those who had stopped drinking within the previous year, white matter volume increased and ventricular volume decreased in women, but not in men. After more than a year in recovery, however, those signs disappeared in women and became apparent in men.
