Ethanol impairs cognition, executive function, and attentional processes that involve several brain regions. Among the constellation of cognitive impairments produced by ethanol, learning and memory, which is hippocampal dependent, is particularly vulnerable to ethanol-induced impairments (see Matthews and Silvers 2004 for review). However, the magnitude of these cognitive impairments is age dependent. For example, early studies reported that acute ethanol administration to adolescent rats produced greater learning and memory deficits compared to adults (Land and Spear 2004; Markwiese et al. 1998) and this differential effect was dose dependent (Acheson et al. 2001). However, the opposite effect (adolescents are less sensitive than adults to the effects of ethanol) has also been reported (Land and Spear 2004; Rajendran and Spear 2004). Regardless of whether adolescents are more or less sensitive to ethanol-induced cognitive impairments, it is clear that ethanol affects the hippocampus of adolescents differently than adults. Although the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this difference are not yet elucidated, it is known that ethanol more potently attenuates hippocampal long-term potentiation in brain slices from adolescent rats compared to adult rats (Pyapali et al.
