On 23 Oct 95 06:31:13 GMT,
hosuike <hosuike at idirect.com > wrote:
>I am writing a thesis about the effect of alcoholics in short term
>memory(i.e. alcoholic blackout). I have search a lot of academic
>articles but there is no author can provide complete biochemical
>mechanism about this event. If you realize some details about this
>mechanism, would you like to share the information with me or to give me
>some hints about the source of those information(e.g. title of some
>academic articles)? Thank you!!
>
Hosuike:
As far as I'm aware, nobody even knows how alcohol exerts any of its
effects, beyond "increases cell membrane permeability" (which
may or may not even be relevant). In large doses it's a bit like a
general anesthetic, but nobody knows for sure how those work either!
Ethanol doesn't bind to receptors, which makes it a lot harder to know
which cellular reactions are modified. There are also substantial
genetic variations in reactions to alcohol - if we actually knew what
the genes were we might have a better idea.
There's probably an even greater genetic variation in humans than in
experimental mice and rats. Maybe with the progress in sequencing the
human, mice and rat genomes we can at last look forward to knowing
what these genes are before we all retire! (They've only been working
on alcoholism genes for the last 30 years!)
AJR
