Drinking alcohol could have this strange effect on your memory

There's nothing worse than waking up after a night out and not having a clue what you did the night before.

It happens to the best of us, and The Fear is certainly not a nice feeling. However, a new study is claiming that drinking alcohol can actually improve your memory. And believe us, we're as surprised as you are. According to research conducted by the University of Exeter, people who drink alcohol after studying information are better at retaining that information afterwards. The study involved 88 participants who were asked to do a word-learning task. The group was then split in two, with one half told to drink as much alcohol as they wanted, and the other half told to drink none. The next day, all 88 were given the task again and, surprisingly, the half who had drank the night before managed to remember more of the words. The group who drank had consumed an average of four units of alcohol each. Author of the study, professor Celia Morgan, said that although it is not fully known why this group remembered more, researchers believe it is because alcohol "blocks the learning of new information."

 "... Therefore the brain has more resources available to lay down other recently learned information into long-term memory."

The study also showed that those who drank more remembered more. Despite these surprising results, the researchers made a point to remind people of the negative effects of alcohol too. This is the first study to test this theory in a natural setting, with participants drinking in their homes as opposed to a laboratory.