BRAIN DIFFERENCES DETECTED IN ALCOHOLICS' KIDS

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Brain scans of children who come from families
with several generations of alcohol dependence reveal differences in a
region of the brain associated with basic emotions, researchers have found.

Dr. Shirley Y. Hill of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and
colleagues published the findings in the June issue of the journal
Biological Psychiatry.

"The paper is the first demonstration that a brain structure that is part
of a circuit that is involved in both emotion and cognition may be smaller
in adolescents from families with a high loading of alcohol dependence
before they drink," Hill told Reuters Health.

In the study, Hill's team conducted MRI scans on 17 teens considered to be
at high risk of alcohol dependence due to a strong family history of
alcoholism. The average age of the participants was 17 years, and none had
ever consumed alcohol. The study participants were compared with 17 teens
without a family history of alcoholism.

Those with a family history of alcoholism were found to have a reduction in
the size of the right side of an area of the brain called the amygdala--a
walnut-sized region that is known to control basic emotions.

"When we looked at some of the children who hadn't had any drugs or alcohol
to speak of, the same pattern of smaller right amygdala volume was seen,"
Hill told Reuters Health. "Why the right amygdala? We are not sure."

The amygdala is part of a "reward circuit" within the brain that has been
implicated in some addictive behaviors, including cocaine use and gambling,
Hill said. The smaller size of the amygdala could indicate a developmental
delay that affects this circuit, she added.

Hill noted that work by other researchers suggests that the right amygdala
may be growing more during adolescence and that brain development in these
teens may catch up to normal proportions by adulthood.

"The other important point is that the teens we studied were on average
quite bright with above-average IQ and came from middle to upper-middle
class families," Hill said in the interview.

"In spite of these advantages, they carry a greater than average
susceptibility for developing alcohol dependence because of the family
history of alcohol dependence," she pointed out.

"Prevention is clearly the way to go in preventing the transmission across
generations," Hill concluded.