Brain atrophy in not uncommonly seen with aging. The brain looks shrunk on a CT or MRI brain, thus, brain shrinkage. We have talked about this problem before in the incredible shrinking brain blog. Alcohol abuse greatly “facilitates” brain shrinkage. Modest alcohol use has been proven to be beneficial for one’s health and can, actually, extend your life. Alcohol in excessive amounts is known to be toxic for the brain.

Compare two images above (click on the image to see a larger version). The upper image is of a 53 year old male with a long history of alcoholism. The bottom image is a “normal” brain. (I put normal in a quotation marks since it’s an image of my brain and my wife will argue that there is nothing normal with that brain).Anyway, do you see the difference?

Brain atrophy is not the only thing that happens to alcoholics. Wernicke - Korsakoff syndrome is a neuropsychiatric condition that sometimes affects chronic drinkers. This disorder is mainly due to thiamine deficiency. The psychiatric part of this syndrome (Korsakoff syndrome) manifests itself as an anterograde (future) and a retrograde (past) memory loss. The patients often make up things to fill their memory gaps. Some patients come up with “incredible” stories. This is known as a confabulation.

From a personal experience: the patients with this syndrome are very pleasant to talk to. The only problem is that the patient might not have any idea of what happened 15-20 minutes ago. The patient might still remember the events of the remote past.

The bottom line – everything, including alcohol, is good in moderation.