It has often been observed that binge drinking can result in aggressive behaviour, but no-one knew why - until now that is...

A research team at the U.S National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (in Bethesda, Maryland) used an MRI scanner to to look at the brain activity of 12 healthy 'social drinkers', both when sober and after they had been given alcohol intravenously (obviously they couldn't allow any actual drinking to take place!) until their blood alcohol level had reached 0.8g of alcohol per 100 ml of blood - the legal limit for driving in the U.S and the UK. In both conditions they were shown pictures of either frightened or neutral faces.

The researchers found that the alcohol completely changed the way the brain reacted to the images.

Without alcohol the amygdala - which is the region of the brain involved in processing emotional reactions - lit up (in the MRI images) in response to the frightened faces, but with the high level of alcohol it was less active, responding equally to both neutral and fearful faces.

This may help explain, say the reserachers, why drunkenness makes people more aggressive. It impairs the amygdala's ability to detect threats or fearfulness in others. (It may also explain why alcohol-fuelled jokes seem so funny to the drunken raconteur while so feeble to sober listeners).

Of course this is not just a 21st century phenomenon. The Bible, without the benefit of MRI scanners, has this wise observation:

It isn't smart to get drunk!
Drinking makes a fool of you
and leads to fights.
(Proverbs chapter 20:1 CEV)

Don't say you haven't been warned!