酒精能增强记忆？研究显示：重复的酒精挥发可以增强大脑关键区的(神经元突触可塑性。

The common view that drinking is bad for learning and memory isn't wrong, says neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa, but it highlights only one side of what ethanol consumption does to the brain.

    神经生物学家 Hitoshi Morikawa说道:人们 普遍认为喝酒不利于学习, 而我们的记忆永远都是对的. 但这其实只突出了酒精对大脑的部分作用.

"Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we're talking about conscious memory," says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. "Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague's name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning. But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or 'conditionability,' at that level."

   "通常,在我们谈论学习和记忆的时候,我们指的是有意识的记忆", Morikawa说,他的相关研究发表在上期的神经生物学期刊上."酒精使我们丧失了一些信息记忆功能比如忘记了同伴的名字，或者某个词的意思，或者忘了早上把车停在哪里了，但是我们的潜意识也在学习记忆中，酒精也许能增强我们的实际学习能力，或者那个层面的环境应变能力。”

Morikawa's study, which found that repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain, is further evidence toward an emerging consensus in the neuroscience community that drug and alcohol addiction is fundamentally a learning and memory disorder.

  Morikawa的研究: 重复的酒精挥发能增强大脑关键区的（神经元）突触可塑性。这进一步验证了神经生物学团体一致认为的吸毒和酗酒会扰乱基础的学习和记忆的观点。

When we drink alcohol or shoot up heroin, or snort cocaine, or take methamphetamines), our subconscious is learning to consume more. But it doesn't stop there. We become more receptive to forming subsconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, even people and social situations.

  当我们喝酒，吸食海洛因或者可卡因，吃亢奋的药丸， 我们潜意识里在试着消耗更多。但是还不只这些。我们会变得更加容易接受潜意识里的记忆及对食物，音乐，甚至是人和社会地位形成的习惯。

In an important sense, says Morikawa, alcoholics aren't addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief they get from drinking alcohol. They're addicted to the constellation of environmental, behavioral and physiological cues that are reinforced when alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.

 在一个重要的程度上来说，Morikawa说，酗酒的人不会对其过往借酒消愁中上瘾。他们上瘾的是那时的环境，活动，及当酒精触发大脑释放多巴胺时，他的生理刺激的暗示也会增强。

"People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it's a learning transmitter," says Morikawa. "It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released."

  “人们普遍认为多巴胺是快乐的发送机，但是准确的说，它是个学习中的发送机”，Morikawa说道。“当大脑释放多巴胺时，神经元也会变得活跃起来”

Alcohol, in this model, is the enabler. It hijacks the dopaminergic system, and it tells our brain that what we're doing at that moment is rewarding (and thus worth repeating).

   在这个模式中酒精就是个引擎（促成者）。它洗劫了多巴胺能的系统，并且告诉我们的大脑我们此时所作的是值得褒奖的（因此是值得重复尝试）

Among the things we learn is that drinking alcohol is rewarding. We also learn that going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods and listening to certain kinds of music are rewarding. The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more "potentiated" the various synapses become and the more we crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.

   我们从中学到喝酒是好事，同时也学到去酒吧，和朋友聊天，吃某些食物，听某些音乐也同样是奖励。喝酒时经常做这些事，大脑就会释放更多的多巴胺，各种神经元会变得更强，这样我们就会更渴望喝酒时的那些经历及相关的联系。

Morikawa's long-term hope is that by understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction better, he can develop anti-addiction drugs that would weaken, rather than strengthen, the key synapses. And if he can do that, he would be able to erase the subconscious memory of addiction.

 Morikawa的长远目标是通过更好的理解神经生物学上瘾的基础原因，他能研究出抗上瘾的药来削弱而不是增强关键神经元。要是他能成功的话，他就可以消除造成沉迷潜意识记忆的原因。

"We're talking about de-wiring things," says Morikawa. "It's kind of scary because it has the potential to be a mind controlling substance. Our goal, though, is to reverse the mind controlling aspects of addictive drugs."

   “我们现在谈论的是神经脉络，”Morikawa说道“这是有点可怕因为它能在潜意识中影响人们的决策思想。然而我们的目标只是是颠覆我们先前吸毒上瘾的思想”。