How alcohol does—and doesn't—affect your memory Blacking out isn't always a binary thing.

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Alcohol affects how the brain records long-term memories.
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▼ On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford will take the stand at the Supreme Court confirmation proceedings for Brett Kavanaugh, who she has accused of sexual assault when they were in high school. Several other women have also come forward with similar stories in recent days. At the center of the investigation is the question of how alcohol affects memory and the brain, and whether these women could reliably remember something that happened to them under the influence.
The answer, experts tellPopular Science, is that while drinking can dull a person’s recollection significantly, traumatic situations  can indeed leave a lasting imprintno matter the level of intoxication.
Alcoholspares no part of the brain, including our memory. “It’s a systemic effect,” says William Barr, director of neuropsychology at NYU Langone Health, “So the alcohol is elevated in your blood levels and that’s going to all parts of the brain, so general brain functioning is reduced.”
These effects start after just one or two drinks. Motor function starts to slow, you start to feel more social and relaxed, and maybe even a little emotional or impulsive. After three or four, you’ll start to get a blood alcohol  contentaround or above 0.08 percent, the legal driving limit. Basic instincts, housed in the limbic system, start overriding higher judgment, controlled in the frontal cortex. Once you start getting upwards of six or eight or ten drinks, alcohol can start slowing down basic functioning in the most fundamental, central parts of our brains that control breathing and heart rate.
When it comes to memory, drinking messes with how our brains “encode” information, says Barr. There are three stages of memory—encoding, retrieving, and storing. Encoding is how we take in and remember new memories. We have to pay attention to something to encode it so we can later retrieve it from storage, says Barr. That’s why when you’re distracted, or doing something routine like driving home on a normal day, you may not always remember doing it. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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