Related Experiment Videos
Reversible brain shrinkage in abstinent alcoholics, measured by MRI
G Schroth1, T Naegele, U Klose
1Department of Neuroradiology, University of Tübingen, Federal Republic of Germany.
Neuroradiology
|January 1, 1988
Abstract:
Magnetic resonance imaging of the intracranial CSF volume was compared before and after 5 weeks of confirmed abstinence in 9 alcohol-dependent patients. All patients showed a highly significant reduction in CSF volume in accordance with reexpansion of the brain after alcohol abstinence. T2 values for white matter, estimated by linear regression from 16 echoes of a CPGM sequence, however, showed no significant increase such as occurs in rehydration. This indicates, that alcohol-induced reversible brain atrophy cannot be attributed to fluctuation of free water in the brain only.