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Off-topic: Beer makes you clever: official | The Register

Friday, April 29, 2005

Beer makes you clever: official | The Register

Beer makes you clever: official | The Register: "We already know that beer doesn't actually make you fat but rather fights cancer while promoting world peace and understanding and a brighter future for all our children."

We already know that beer doesn't actually make you fat but rather fights cancer while promoting world peace and understanding and a brighter future for all our children.

It's no surprise then that we can now confirm what the super-intelligent if somehat wobbly hacks at Vulture Central have known for years: alcohol makes you cleverer.

That's to say, a Swedish team has shown that mice fed with moderate amounts of alcohol grew new nerve cells in the brain. The full implications of the Karolinska Institute research - which appears in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology - are unclear, but lead boffin Stefan Brene told the BBC: "We believe that the increased production of new nerve cells during moderate alcohol consumption can be important for the development of alcohol addiction and other long-term effects of alcohol on the brain."

He did, however, add that it's possible that "the extra cells might help with learning and memory" - although we reckon the word "moderate" is key here since no-one who has ever drunk 16 pints of ale has been able to recall a single detail of the session come the following morning.

A spokeswoman from Alcohol Concern concluded: "This type of study could prove useful in the long term to shed light on the relationship between alcohol intake and dependency. However, very little can be drawn from a single animal-based study at this stage. Much more research is needed to explore the relationship between drinking patterns and their effect on the human brain."

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