Impacto del consumo de alcohol en forma de atracón sobre las capacidades inhibitorias de adolescentes consumidores

Abstract Binge drinking refers to a specifi c pattern of alcohol use widely spread among youths and adolescents in Spain. This pattern is characterized by high amounts of alcohol intake in a single session, typically during weekends. Studies in animal models have demonstrated that certain regions of the adolescent brain, and the cognitive processes they support, are especially vulnerable to this pattern of alcohol intake. Hence, it is relevant to investigate the detrimental effects of binge drinking on human volunteers. The best suited methodology to identify these effects is the prospective follow-up of young users who start to get involved in this pattern, in order to better dissociate vulnerability markers from consequences of alcohol use. This design should be accompanied by careful control of confounding variables in order to separate the effects of alcohol from those of polysubstance use or psychiatric comorbidity. It is also useful to consider multimodal assessments and different explanatory levels (e.g., neuropsychology, psychophysiology). The studies conducted so far in Spanish adolescents and youths have yielded results consistent with the animal literature: in terms of neuropsychological performance, binge drinkers have poorer performance on tests of declarative memory, working memory and specifi c aspects of executive functions, and these deficits persist even after two years in those adolescent who quitted the binge drinking habit; in terms of psychophysiological patterns, binge drinkers also showed abnormal inferior prefrontal signal during a working memory loaded Go/No-Go task in the two-year follow-up. Although still scarce, human research supports signifi cant detrimental effects of binge drinking on cognitive function and mental health.