Research being conducted in Binghamton University professor and researcher Linda Spear’s lab may allow people to further understand the damage caused by drinking as an adolescent.

In her presentation titled “Why Adolescents Can, and Do, Drink A Lot,” Jes Saalfield, a graduate student studying behavioral neuroscience and working in Spear’s lab, outlined research on the correlations between consumption and age.

“I think this presentation is important because many teens and young adults do not understand the consequences of their drinking behavior,” Saalfield said.

The presentation, organized by the Neuroscience Club, also provided students a glimpse into careers in research.

“We wanted to present this information because we feel it is important to help students figure out what path to follow in choosing a career,” said Ashley Hall, Neuroscience Club president and a senior majoring in integrative neuroscience. “We figured that having students be spoken to by someone who is similar in age and conducting research, a popular decision by many students recently, would allow them to see the information and the example firsthand of what it is like to be a researcher.”

The presentation was focused around research conducted on rats, which have similar reactions to alcohol as humans. In both species, the consumption, reaction and tolerance of alcohol is different when it comes to age, namely in the time between adolescence and adulthood.

As the brain matures from adolescence to adulthood, Saalfield explained, development of brain functions is limited due to the rewiring of the brain.

These conditions, combined with an increase of myelin, which increases the speed and efficiency of messages sent to the brain, can be detrimental in the long run.

Adolescents are more sensitive to the “rewards” of alcohol, such as social acceptance, and less sensitive to the bad, such as susceptibility to its sedative properties, impaired motor skills, anxiety; they also face less of a hangover. The lesser short-term pain can lead to binge drinking, according to research conducted in Spear’s lab.

“Adolescents consume large amounts of alcohol in a binge pattern, which can cause long-term problems,” Saalfield said. “I hope that the research being done in this field helps educate the community on the repercussions of drinking at such an early age.”

These patterns lead to complications in the future, as chronic alcohol abuse in adolescence weakens the body’s response to it, which may lead to alcohol abuse.

Saalfield and her colleagues’ research is not being done in pursuit of any specific result or in correspondence with any pharmaceutical research, just to figure out “why.”

“This research is very knowledge based- i.e. we do this to improve knowledge in the field,” she said in an email. “And to possible extrapolate it to a clinical setting.”