🧠 Even before birth, your brain can be programmed for alcohol

How can events that occurred before our birth shape our behaviors decades later? Recent research explores this link between prenatal alcohol exposure and a tendency to drink more and faster, uncovering early brain modifications.

This study, published in JNeurosci, was conducted by Mary Schneider and Alexander Converse from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their protocol used rhesus monkeys to observe the long-term effects of alcohol and stress during gestation, with the goal of better understanding how these factors influence brain development.


Pregnant monkeys were exposed to three conditions: moderate alcohol consumption, mild stress, or a combination of both. In adulthood, the offspring were then tested for their brain chemistry, with a particular focus on the dopamine system, as well as for their manner of consuming alcohol.

The results indicate that prenatal alcohol exposure alters the dopamine system in adults and is linked to faster drinking. An important finding: the brain measurements, taken before the animals drank, allow for predicting their future behaviors, which reflects similar observations in humans concerning alcohol-related disorders.

These brain responses could help explain why some people progress from occasional drinking to more serious problems, while others do not.

For human health, this research indicates that drinking during pregnancy can have lasting consequences, linking prenatal alcohol exposure to less healthy drinking habits later in life. Although prenatal stress did not show a direct link with alcohol consumption, it could influence other behavioral aspects.