Hangover swim

The consequences of cultural drunkenness were tested on mice

Quitting drinking can lead to serious depression, even if the drunk is... an ordinary laboratory mouse. This result was obtained by specialists from the Alcohol Research Center at North Carolina State University. In their opinion, if you feed rodents alcohol for a long time and then stop making them drunk, the mice begin to become depressed. Plus, without alcohol, neurons in the brains of animals are formed more slowly than usual.

The results are generally quite predictable, since many have observed this with their own eyes: after the end of a period of prolonged drinking, a person does not have too many positive emotions. However, science is science: even such assumptions, based on everyday impressions, scientists need to test in an experimental laboratory. Naturally, for the experiments they took familiar mice, on which generations of researchers test their own hypotheses (there is a suspicion that biologists now have a much better understanding of how the body of these rodents functions than in human physiology). The animals had to go on a moderate binge, and then try to get out of it under the careful supervision of experimenters.

For 28 days, the animals were given small doses of alcohol, as a result of which the mice appeared to be constantly slightly tipsy. They did not lead to serious drunkenness: the scientists did not have the task of giving the rodents a severe hangover; on the contrary, the researchers wanted to check what would happen if the experimental animals were accustomed to something like “cultural drunkenness.” Apparently, a similar style of behavior in people involves a daily glass or two of strong alcohol in the evenings: this won’t make you fall off your feet, just maybe “relax” a little. And after four weeks of such a controlled “binge,” the mice were deprived of their usual “stack.”

Now it was necessary to understand what was happening to the mice, in particular whether they had depression or not. In fact, this syndrome is not always easy to diagnose; it happens that people live in a state of chronic depression for years until some doctor refers the patient to a specialized specialist. Naturally, you can’t take rodents to see a psychologist, so we had to give them an indirect test in the laboratory with water procedures.

Drunkards deprived of their dose were lowered into the water, where they had to splash around for six minutes. Like many completely land animals, mice do not drown; for some time they are quite capable of staying on the surface of the water and even swimming. Of course, they will not climb into the water of their own free will, but if this suddenly happens, the rodents will overcome a small stream without much difficulty. But before they start thrashing their paws underwater, mice take a short pause, and the longer it is, the more “depressed” they are, as is commonly believed.

Clyde Hodge, the leader of this experiment, believes that the mice showed a bad mood for two weeks after finishing the alcohol course. In other words, during this period, the pause between the moment the mouse plopped into the pool and the beginning of active swimming was longer than usual. According to him, researchers were able to model in animals the cause-and-effect relationship between stopping moderate alcohol consumption and depression.

Another consequence of quitting alcohol, according to the findings, was a decrease in the number of neural stem cells and new neurons in the hippocampus. As Hodge noted, current thinking suggests that the development of new cells in this part of the brain may influence mood. According to scientists, what happens to mice also happens to people who indulge in moderate drinking. In addition, the University of North Carolina tested the effects of conventional antidepressants. When mice deprived of alcohol were given these drugs, the development of depression was stopped and the process of creating new neurons was restored.

Mikhail MANSKOY