People who have drunk a moderate amount of alcohol before a traumatic event have more flashbacks than those who drank no alcohol. This new research from the University College London may explain why some people develop post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other people do not. Researchers also discovered that people who drank a large amount before a traumatic event did not report an increase in the number of flashbacks they experienced.
"Many people who experience a personally traumatic event as rape or a road traffic accident have consumed alcohol beforehand. For the first time, this research gives us an idea of how being under the influence of alcohol might contribute to our wellbeing later on," said James Bisby, who led the research.
In the study, participants either drank alcohol or a placebo beverage, and then did a virtual reality job designed to examine how an experienced event is stored within their memory. They were then shown a video of bad car accidents and recorded the number of times they had a flashback over the next week.
"People who had been given a small amount of alcohol showed reductions in memory that relies on contextual aspects of an event, whereas memory based on an egocentric representation was intact. However, those individuals given a higher dose of alcohol showed a global reduction in memory with decreases in both types of memory," said Bisby.
