What Happened Last Night?

If your teen drinks, it's likely she may not remember what happened the night before.

Heavy drinking can cause blackouts - episodes where you can't remember what you did - sometimes for long periods of time. Black outs are common among teens who drink heavily because the part of their brains that processes memory, the hippocampus, is not finished developing.

Aaron White, PhD with the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and his former colleagues at Duke University, surveyed 772 college undergraduates. They asked them them if they ever had a blackout.

Of the students who had drunk alcohol, 51% reported blacking out at some point in their lives and 40% reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey.

The students later learned that what they didn't remember included stealing, unprotected sex, and drunk driving.

Equal numbers of male and female students reported experiencing blackouts, despite the fact that the boys drank more alcohol, more often than the girls. The research suggests females may tend to black out more often and have more incidents of other forms of alcohol-induced memory loss.