ArticleNeuroscience2012
Moderate drinking? Alcohol consumption significantly decreases neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus.
Article in Neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eye Tracking Studies Exploring Cognitive and Affective Processes among Alcohol Drinkers: a Systematic Review and Perspectives.Neuropsychology review · 2021Pooled it
- Adolescent Ethanol Exposure Disrupts the Mature Phenotype of Surviving Neuroprogenitors in Female Mice.Hippocampus · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of Alcohol Interference with Hippocampal Neurogenesis and its Repair Strategies.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Review
- White matter neural substrates in alcohol dependence with genetic risk and their role in pathological reward process.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Role of glial cells in neurotoxicological effects of alcohol.Advances in neurotoxicology · 2025Article
- Moderate alcohol consumption does not protect cognitive function when controlling for income and cultural factors.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Ethanol changes Nestin-promoter induced neural stem cells to disturb newborn dendritic spine remodeling in the hippocampus of mice.Neural regeneration research · 2024Article
- Article
- Light Alcohol Consumption Promotes Early Neurogenesis Following Ischemic Stroke in Adult C57BL/6J Mice.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Impaired synaptic transmission in dorsal dentate gyrus increases impulsive alcohol seeking.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Alcohol Withdrawal and the Associated Mood Disorders-A Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Cholinergic and Neuroimmune Signaling Interact to Impact Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis and Alcohol Pathology Across Development.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Review
- Alcohol Enhances Responses to High Frequency Stimulation in Hippocampus from Transgenic Mice with Increased Astrocyte Expression of IL-6.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2021Article
- Drinking frequency matters: links between consumption pattern and implicit/explicit attitudes towards alcohol.Psychopharmacology · 2021Article
- Article
- Intermittent ethanol exposure during adolescence impairs cannabinoid type 1 receptor-dependent long-term depression and recognition memory in adult mice.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Dentate Gyrus Proliferative Responses After Traumatic Brain Injury and Binge Alcohol in Adult Rats.Neuroscience insights · 2020Article
- Sex Differences in the Neurobiology of Alcohol Use Disorder.Alcohol research : current reviews · 2020Review
- Peroxiredoxin II Maintains the Mitochondrial Membrane Potential against Alcohol-Induced Apoptosis in HT22 Cells.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Subventricular zone neural precursor cell responses after traumatic brain injury and binge alcohol in male rats.Journal of neuroscience research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Drinking alcohol in moderation is often considered a health-conscious behavior, associated with improved cardiovascular and brain health. However, "moderate" amounts of alcohol include drinking 3-4 alcohol beverages in a day, which is closer to binge drinking and may do more harm than good. Here we examined how daily drinking of moderate-high alcohol alters the production of new neurons in the adult hippocampus. Male and female adult Sprague-Dawley rats were provided free access to a liquid replacement diet that was supplemented with either 4% ethanol or Maltodextrin for a period of 2 weeks. Proliferating cells were labeled with 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) and the number of BrdU-positive cells in the hippocampus was assessed after the final day of drinking. A subset of rats was also exposed to a motor skill or associative learning task to examine the functional effects of alcohol consumption. The drinking regime resulted in an average blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.08%, which is comparable to the human legal driving limit in many countries. This level of intoxication did not impair motor skill learning or function in either sex, nor did the alcohol consumption disrupt associative learning 2 days after drinking. Therefore, moderate alcohol consumption did not disrupt basic sensory, motor or learning processes. However, the number of cells produced in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus was reduced by nearly 40%. Thus, even moderate consumption of alcohol for a relatively short period of time can have profound effects on structural plasticity in the adult brain.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.