Study: Taste Of Beer Makes People Want To Drink More
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A new study says just tasting beer increases a person's desire to get drunk.
According to CBS News , the study found that people who only tasted beer, without any effect from the alcohol itself, had dopamine, a brain neurotransmitter associated with alcohol and other abused drugs, released into the brain.
Researchers gave 49 men two scans, one when they tasted beer and one when they tasted Gatorade, which looked for evidence of a dopamine increase.
According to the study, researchers found that there were increased levels of dopamine when the men drank beer and also a significant increase in dopamine activity with participants who's families had a history of alcoholism.
"We believe this is the first experiment in humans to show that the taste of an alcoholic drink alone, without any intoxicating effect from the alcohol, can elicit this dopamine activity in the brain's reward centers," said David A. Kareken, Ph.D., professor of neurology at the IU School of Medicine and the deputy director of the Indiana Alcohol Research Center in a press release.
For more information on the study visit: www.eurekalert.org.
