Alcohol is often seen as a central part of Australian culture and social life, but how is it affecting our brain health? This topic was explored in one of our Brain Awareness Week 2026 webinars, “Uncorking the Effects of Alcohol on the Brain”.
Prof Greg Sutherland talked about the history of drinking, the relationship between alcohol & brain health, how different types of drinking affect our health, and future research directions.
We covered lots of fascinating questions during the live webinar, but there were some that we didn’t have time for on the day. Prof Sutherland has kindly answered the remaining questions, so hopefully we have addressed everything you wanted to know about alcohol and brain health. And if you still have questions – we hope to see you in a future webinar!
This event was hosted by the Using our Brains (UoB) donor program and the NSW Brain Tissue Resource Centre (BTRC), who partnered with the Brain Foundation for Brain Awareness Week.
The NSW BTRC is a brain bank based at the University of Sydney Charles Perkins Centre. The primary focus of their collection is to support research into the aetiology and pathogenesis of alcohol disorders, mental health disorders and healthy control tissue.
Their mission is to enable the advancement of medical research into neurological illnesses to understand, treat and cure disease. It is only possible through the generosity of donors and donor families, who, with great foresight and kindness, give at a time of loss so that others may be helped in the future.
If you are interested in registering as a brain donor, you can sign up through the Using our Brains donor program. This program enrols brain donors from a broad cross-section of the community to offer future generations the possibility of improved health.
No, we don’t. The simple reason is that we need to contact the person to obtain information about their drinking and medical history. AA is totally anonymous.
This is surprising and I am unsure of the answer. My thoughts would be around the relative number of Australians who have cars and distances travelled. There may be regional and age differences in Australian statistics that might clarify this in more detail.
I don’t know the answer off the top of my head. I think that countries where public health campaigns have been operating for some time like Australia might be the ones in decline, and vice versa.
The euphoric phase of alcohol is relatively short lived and replaced by inhibitory effects on the brain such as sleepiness. Depending on intake some alcohol may still be in a person’s system after 12-18 hours but there are also metabolites and effects on kidney function that can account for symptoms like a hangover and dehydration. The scenario you talk about has been called hangxiety, and seems to be a rebound effect in the brain as it recovers from alcohol exposure.
There are likely benefits from abstinence or return to recommended levels of alcohol irrespective of how long or how much you have previously drunk. However, some of the brain damage is permanent and you may not recover full function. It is also possible that drinking has damaged the liver to such an extent that the brain is now exposed to compounds like ammonia and this can also lead to symptoms such as confusion, memory loss and personality changes.
Longitudinal studies mean that the same people are followed and the same things measured at, at least two different time points. For example, the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) in the US has run for 75 years and is intergenerational with grandchildren of the original participants now enrolled. Longitudinal data is particularly important when we are trying to understand how factors like alcohol use are affected by or interact with ageing.
I was referring to drinking to the point where the person is unconscious.
No, we haven’t. We work largely on brain tissue so this specific assay is not relevant.
Korsakoff’s syndrome is the chronic form of Wernicke’s Encephalopathy. Both occur due to a deficiency in vitamin B1 (thiamine), but Korsakoff’s is irreversible. My research group used to study this disease a lot, but it has become quite rare among people drinking heavily in Australia, and we think this is because of the fortification of foodstuffs like baking flour with thiamine. It is occasionally seen in people with nutritional issues because of chemotherapy or anorexia nervosa.
The short answer is that that there is not any definitive test at present. It would be possible to undergo neuropsychological testing albeit these are not specific for alcohol-induced issues. However, we are now seeing the increasing use of blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, and these do include more general indicators of brain damage. Therefore I think we will be able to offer persons with alcohol use disorder these tests in the near future.
Yes, and there is a current interest between post-traumatic stress syndrome and alcohol use. Other predisposing conditions may include depression and anxiety. The latter includes anxiety related to social phobias, itself a common reason while many people might deliberately or inadvertently drink. These are complex issues with bidirectional or circular relationships, while there are also genetic factors in common between addiction and mental health conditions like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
This is not a term I am familiar with. Alcohol certainly affects what we would describe as subcortical structures as these make up most of the reward pathway, that we think is the focus of changes underlying addiction. At the same time alcohol distributes freely through the whole brain and not surprisingly most areas, and particularly the white matter are affected to some extent.
I am more familiar with alcohol being an immediate trigger for migraines, but my reading on this subject suggests that you are correct in that a previous history of alcohol use, despite stopping, can predispose to future migraines.
This is out of my area of expertise, but it does appear that rates of AUD are higher in autistic people than the general population. We do not currently collect ASD brains, but we would be very interested in partnering with a clinician and patient advocacy groups to explore this as a future focus of our bank. In general, mental health disorders are of ever-increasing interest to researchers world-wide, because of their impact on people’s quality of life, and brain banks I think can add a lot to this area. More generally the tissue we collect is only as good as what we know about the donor during their lifetime, and we ideally want to collect sufficient affected people that allow studies to take place. Hence, we like to partner with groups who have access to or represent those persons.
Exercise has been suggested as a non-pharmaceutical treatment for AUD. It does appear to reduce consumption and cravings although I am unsure of how or why this is the case. It might be related to more positive moods or general effects on circulatory health that concurrently benefits brain function.
During the webinar, we answered the following questions:
If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry! You can watch the full webinar recording now, available on the Using our Brains Youtube Channel.
The Brain Foundation is dedicated to funding the next generation of Australian research into brain disorders, diseases, and injuries, with the ultimate goal of advancing diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.
