
Alcohol shrinks women's brains more than men's - ksvs
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/10/14/healthmag.alcohol.brain.shrinkage/index.html
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aaronjerling
A friend of mine once argued that alcohol boosted brain performance; it went
something like this. Alcohol kills brain cells. Darwin's theory implies that
the weakest and slowest to adapt will be the first to die out. Thus: Drinking
alcohol kills weaker brain cells and boosts brain performance.

Does that mean that women are smarter than men because more of their
braincells get killed (or shrunk) according to this research?

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Allocator2008
Not sure that works. Remember, a neuron is a relatively simple mechanism. It
is just that a bunch of them together make one "smart" or whatever. So
alcohol's wanton destruction of neurons is only destructive I would think,
because there are not "stronger" vs. "weaker" neurons. They are all pretty
much the same, simple mechanisms. The more the better, and so killing some of
them off just can't be good, I don't think. I am not a doctor but I do know
neurons are fairly simple. They fire if a "threshold" of electric potential is
exceeded, else they don't. They are simple, stupid, binary mechanisms. But put
lots of them together and you eventually get Einstein. So killing neurons can
only be bad I think.

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aaronjerling
Hmm. It would be interesting to have a way to boost neurons - a neuron rich
drink every day . . Something for the bio-scientists I think.

