The cerebral cortex is the highest order region of your brain – it controls your speech and thought processes, interprets the information from your senses and controls most of your voluntary responses. Drinking interferes with the cells in this part of the brain, reducing your inhibitions and making you more talkative and outgoing. At the same time, though, it dulls your senses, and your ability to make good decisions decreases substantially.
Мейд up of the hippocampus and the septal area, the limbic system is the part of the brain that controls your emotions and memory. When you drink enough to affect this area, you might experience extreme emotions – sometimes switching wildly between conflicting emotions – and have trouble remembering things.
The cerebellum is the region of the brain that controls movement, both voluntary muscle movements like walking and involuntary muscle movements that affect your balance. Someone who has enough to drink to affect this part of the brain is often called “falling down drunk” and has trouble completing even simple movements. Those who have consumed enough alcohol to affect the cerebellum will fail common sobriety tests like touching the nose with one finger or walking a straight line.
You’ve probably heard that alcohol dehydrates you – and can affect you sexually. That’s thanks to these two centers of the brain. The hypothalamus affects sexual arousal and performance, but when you add alcohol, the results can be disappointing. Alcohol depresses the functions of the hypothalamus, hampering your ability to perform. When alcohol reaches the pituitary gland, it signals your kidneys to excrete more water, making you have to urinate more. The more you pee, the more dehydrated you get.
The medulla, or brain stem, controls everything your body does without you thinking about it – breathing, heart rate, circulation, etc. As your blood alcohol level increases, it begins to affect your medulla, making you feel sleepy. If the BAC is high enough, you’ll “pass out,” or even lose consciousness. If your blood alcohol content gets too high, it will affect your heart rate, breathing and body temperature – a potentially fatal condition.
Other Effects of Alcohol
While alcohol affects the brain the most, drinking can cause problems with other parts of the body as well. For example, it irritates the lining of the stomach, causing vomiting, and it increases blood flow to the skin, causing you to look flushed or sweaty when you drink too much.
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