Drunk everyone from "high": a taste of beer can produce pleasure

at Indiana University School of Medicine found that when you're not drunk, the taste of beer can trigger the release of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter of the brain, which involves many functions such as mood, memory and sleep, and is closely related to drug addiction and alcoholism in previous studies. The study, published yesterday in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, is the first time scientists have observed dopamine release when alcohol is not as drunk.experiment, the researchers performed two positron emission tom tom, PET, which can be used to observe the metabolism of substances in the brain, on 49 men. One scan was after a beer tasting and the other after a sports drink. After tasting the beer, the participants did not have a drunken reaction. They consumed only a small amount of their favorite brand of beer (15 ml), which allowed them to taste the beer without detecting alcohol levels in their blood.PET scans showed that dopamine levels were significantly higher after beer tasting than after tasting the same amount of sports drinks. The difference was even greater in subjects with a family history of alcoholism. In addition to physiological changes, participants verbally reported their desire to continue drinking after tasting beer, which was not the same after eating sports drinks. This is consistent with the fact that alcoholics are prone to relapse after receiving sensory cues, including the taste, smell, and even the barrel of alcohol.Neuroscientist David A. Kareken, one of the study's authors, said participants with a family history of alcohol abuse showed greater differences in dopamine levels, suggesting that dopamine releases from alcohol-related cues may be partly genetic and that such people are at greater risk of future alcohol abuse.