In the early observations from which the premature aging hypothesis evolved, researchers characterized the post mortem appearance of alcoholics’ brains as being small and shriveled compared with the brains of age-matched nonalcoholics (Courville 1966). The appearance was likened to the shrinkage that is associated with normal chronological aging. Other researchers, using neuroimaging techniques, have reported comparable findings in support of the accelerated aging hypothesis; backing the increased vulnerability hypothesis, older alcoholics displayed more brain tissue loss in brain scans than did younger alcoholics (see Pfefferbaum and Rosenbloom 1993). On the whole, most of the structural evidence supports a possible link between alcoholism and premature aging.
