Planning on getting wasted this New Year Eve? You might want to squeeze in some revision for January exams just before doing so. In 2017, a study by researchers from Psychopharmacology and Addiction Research, University of Exeter found that alcohol facilitates memory for information learned just before consumption. This effect, termed ‘retrograde memory facilitation’ was first discovered in 1980, but it was only until this year that the effect was investigated in a naturalistic setting. In the study, 88 social drinkers were given a word-learning task, then were told either to drink as much as they wished to, or not to drink at all. On the next day, they all did the task again, and those who had consumed alcohol outperformed those who had not. In addition, the amount of alcohol consumed was also positively correlated with the number of words remembered! The authors of the study believe that the study results can have implications in developing cognitive enhancing interventions in the future.
alcohol facilitates memory for information learned just before consumption
