A new study shows that just having a parent with an alcohol use disorder affects how your brain transitions between active and resting states — regardless of your own drinking habits.

A new study shows that just having a parent with an alcohol use disorder affects how your brain transitions between active and resting states — regardless of your own drinking habits.

The study, performed by researchers at Purdue University and the Indiana University School of Medicine, discovered that the brain reconfigures itself between completing a mentally demanding task and resting.

But for the brain of someone with a family history of an alcohol use disorder, this reconfiguration doesn’t happen.

While the missing transition doesn’t seem to affect how well a person performs the mentally demanding task itself, it might be related to larger scale brain functions that give rise to behaviors associated with addiction. In particular, study subjects without this brain process demonstrated greater impatience in waiting for rewards, a behavior associated with addiction.

Findings are published in the journal NeuroImage. The work was led by Enrico Amico, a former Purdue postdoctoral researcher who is now a researcher at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Purdue University. Original written by Kayla Wiles. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.