Excessive Alcohol Use In Adolescents

Alcohol is mostly used among the youth, 24 % 18-year-old youth are reported being drunk in February 2016 (Squeglia & Gray, 2016). Excessive alcohol use will seriously affect gray and white matter regions in the brain. Gray matter includes neuronal cell bodies, dendrites, synapses, capillaries, and glial cells. When drinking alcohol, there has decrease in gray matter and white matter encroachment on gray matter (Squeglia, 2016). Theses neural changes lead to an imbalanced development of brain. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2000), excessive alcohol consumption also can cause intoxication. One of the most powerful influences of alcohol, which is also the effect of intoxication, is the excitatory actions of the neurotransmitter glutamate decreases at the NMDA A subtype of glutamate receptor and the inhibitory actions of GABA boosts (NIAAA, 2000).
Research by Corbin and Cronce (2007) conducted a go/stop task (inhibitory control experiment) to test if individuals tend to show an increase in inhibition failures with alcohol intake. One hundred and one moderate to heavy drinkers were assigned to alcohol or placebo and finished 4 administrations of tasks then altered the probability and magnitude of punishment. Participants in the alcohol condition showed a trend that they are less sensitive to stimulus to be compared with participants in the placebo condition. From that, we can know that People who drank too much alcohol reacted with a decline in the ability to