mechanisms of alcoholl
Answers
Alcohol works in the brain primarily by increasing the effects of a neurotransmitter called γ-aminobutyric acid, or GABA.
This is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, and by facilitating its actions, alcohol suppresses the activity of the central nervous system.
The multiple actions of alcohol on the CNS result in a general effect of psycho-motor depression, difficulties in information storage and logical reasoning and motor in-coordination, in addition to stimulating the reward system, a fact that may explain the development of addiction. Knowledge on the neuronal signalling pathways that are altered by alcohol allows the identification of effectors which could reduce its central action, thus, offering new therapeutic perspectives for the rehabilitation of alcohol addicts.
What is alcohol's mechanism of action in the brain?
Michael's answer is a good one, but I think a little coarse grained.
One important thing to remember about alcohol is that, while there is a lot of evidence to support that it acts on GABA channels, the molecule is very small and very lipohpilic (i.e. it dissolves in fats). The membranes (sort of like the cell's skin) of all cells (brain cells especially!) are composed mostly of fats, and the behavior of these cells is massively dependent in many ways on the composition of the cell membrane. If alcohol gets in there it is going to change how EVERYTHING works.
In spite of years of research, the exact mechanism of alcohol remains somewhat elusive. Alcohol's GABA agonist activity has been known for a long time, but a GABA binding site (a place on the GABA protein where alcohol 'snaps in' to have its effect) has yet to be found (to my knowledge at least). In fact the only binding site for alcohols to be proposed so far lies on proteins called GIRKs which are found throughout the brain and have a huge variety of downstream effects.
To complicated matters alcohol has been shown to exhibit NMDA antagonist activity. This is the same mechanism of action as PCP and Ketamine, and yet these drugs are obviously different from alcohol in many ways.
So we have alcohol acting on at least three of the most widely spread, powerful and diverse receptors in the brain having what is obviously an inhibitory effect. It is important to point out that neurotransmitter systems do not operate in a vacuum and are intimately linked to each other. How these all fit together (are these three mechanisms upstream or downstream from each other? parallel? complementary? inhibitory? do they differential alter behavior depending on ethanol concentration?) is still pretty
there are many alcohol we heard due to our subject chemistry tertiary is more reactive alcohol in sn1 reactions alcohol works in the brain by altering levels of neurotransmitters gleutomate is also an example of this .These are some mechanisms of alcohol.