It sounds like we’ve had a similar intellectual journey. As for the graphic, I originally found it using an image search on Google images, and I don’t remember the source. Since I don’t own it in any way, whether you use it is up to you, but I certainly wouldn’t mind.

I’m writing a book about social engineering and plan to include your post’s brain scan photo in my draft version. That’s okay with you, right?

Alcohol is such an ugly road. I just hope my brain isn’t screwed like those blue images. Thanks for a good read with good media. =)

There are two areas of the brain where neurons can be replaced. Neurons can be replaced within your hippocampus, which I believe is responsible for short-term memory, and also the subventricular zone. You can read about that here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis

To quote from the article:

Adult neurogenesis

New neurons are continually born throughout adulthood in predominantly two regions of the brain:

* The subventricular zone (SVZ) lining the lateral ventricles, where the new cells migrate to the olfactory bulb via the rostral migratory stream
* The subgranular zone (SGZ), part of the dentate gyrus of hippocampus.

Many of the newborn cells die shortly after they are born, but a number of them become functionally integrated into the surrounding brain tissue.

Adult neurogenesis is a recent example of a long-held scientific theory being overturned, with the first evidence of mammalian neurogenesis presented in 1992.[3] Early neuroanatomists, including Santiago Ramon y Cajal, considered the nervous system fixed and incapable of regeneration. For many years afterward, only a handful of biologists (including Joseph Altman, Shirley Bayer, and Michael Kaplan) considered adult neurogenesis a possibility. In 1983, with the characterization of neurogenesis in birds[4] and the use of confocal microscopy, the possibility of mammalian neurogenesis became more apparent, but it was not until the early 1990s that hippocampal neurogenesis was demonstrated in non-human primates and humans.[5][6] More recently, neurogenesis in the cerebellum of adult rabbits has also been characterized.[7] Further, some authors (particularly Elizabeth Gould) have suggested that adult neurogenesis may also occur in regions within the brain not generally associated with neurogenesis including the neocortex.[8][9][10] However, others[11] have questioned the scientific evidence of these findings, arguing that the new cells may be of glial origin.

In other areas of the brain there is no evidence that neurons can grow back and be replaced. However, existing neurons that were not killed can in fact grow new dendrite arms and start to rewire the brain, so old functionality can be returned, which is what jim is talking about in the comment above.

However, there is some hope now that those precious brain-cells are not lost for ever. Researchers at Stanford University have found that after at least six months of sobriety, the brain damage caused by alcohol’s toxicity does in fact repair itself.

They concluded that the mental abilities of their study group of long-term alcoholics, who had all been sober for between six months and thirteen years, were now the same as their control group who had not been alcoholics. The only capability that had not been recovered was spatial awareness.