Alcohol Effects That Last Long Into Sobriety

People with severealcohol use disorders可以在很长一段时间内饮用过多的酒精可能导致大脑造成的损坏，体验认知赤字。幸运的是，很多酒精对大脑的损害begins toreverse when alcoholics stop drinking。但是，在饮酒者退出后，大脑功能存在一些问题。

Visuospatial and Visuoperception Issues in Alcoholics Even Into Sobriety

Studies have found that alcoholics who have remained abstinent, even for a prolonged period of time, can display visuospatial and visuoperception deficits.

Visuospatial skills include the ability to see an object or image as a set of parts and then be able to construct a replica of the original from the parts. For example, visuospatial construction includes putting together furniture that comes unassembled, constructing models, or even making a bed or buttoning shirts.

visuoperceptual能力能够基于其形式，模式和颜色来识别对象。简单地说，视觉感知是大脑的能力，了解眼睛的眼睛。

这些认知技能对于许多基本的日常任务都很重要，例如阅读，写作，完成数学问题，甚至穿衣服。例如，具有视觉感知缺陷的人可能会有读取地图的问题。

如果有人具有诸如签证或探索的缺陷，则可以损害他们准确地评估物体之间的距离和空间关系的能力，这可能导致试图驾驶车辆的问题。

A deficit of the ability to use visual-spatial cues, to detect changes and consistencies, and subtle visual discriminations can affect the ability to accomplish everyday tasks like pushing a cart through a grocery store or recognizing your child in a group of similarly dressed children.

脑功能效率低效

Researchers have found that even with long-term sobriety, alcoholics can continue to display deficits in visuoperception and frontal executive functioning of the brain.

在一项研究中，斯坦福大学医学院的研究人员对51次解毒的酒精男性和63名对照男子提供了拍摄的碎片鉴定试验。他们还测试了执行功能和explicit declarative memory。

Using 'Perceptual Closure' Skills

The picture-fragment test measured how quickly the men could identify line drawings of common objects or animals when only partially visible.

People who have visuoperceptual impairments require a complete rendition of these drawings before they are able to identify them compared to unaffected subjects.

Unaffected individuals can use a process known as "perceptual closure" to imagine or "fill in" parts of the image that are not actually visible.

Ability to Learn Measured

To measure the ability to learn, the drawings were shown to the men in the study again after a delay. If they were able to identify the object the second time in a more fragmented rendition, then learning occurred, the researchers said.

该研究发现，与对照组相比，酗酒者在visuoperception和额外执行功能中显示出缺陷。

研究人员还发现，虽然酗酒组能够在控件的同一水平上学习visuoperceptual任务，但它们如何执行任务与控制如何执行它。

需要更复杂的处理

酗酒者使用不同的底层组件过程来执行任务。

“无法调用正常的潜水能力，酗酒者依赖于更复杂的认知系统来执行visuoperceptual学习任务，而不是控制所要求的，”斯坦福教授说，伊迪斯·沙利文说。“这潜在的问题是，如果竞争任务需要相同的系统 - 正面执行职能 - 酗酒可能处于劣势，因为该系统否则将被啮合。”

The researchers concluded that the necessity of having to use frontal executive functions to complete visuoperceptual tasks could affect the performance of recovering alcoholics in driving a vehicle or performing in the workplace.

可能影响工作场所表现

酗酒者将更加困难，以完成要求排序，判断和决策的任务，或者需要组织或规划的复杂任务。研究人员说，需要诸如经营重型设备或牙科的诸如经营重型设备或牙科的求职技能。

"Use of more demanding cognitive systems by the alcoholics may be less efficient and more costly to processing capacity than those invoked by controls," the authors wrote.