Pathways to alcohol-induced brain impairment in young people: a review by Hermens et al., 2013.

Alcohol-use disorders, and particularly binge drinking habits, have dramatically increased among adolescents and young adults during the last decade (Johnston et al., 2007; ValenciaMartı́n et al., 2007) and now constitute a crucial public health problem in Western countries (Gill, 2002; Miller et al., 2007). Nevertheless, if the deleterious consequences of this alcoholconsumption pattern have been largely explored at medical, cognitive and social levels (e.g., Brumback et al., 2007; Laghi et al., 2012), its influence on brain functioning has only been investigated recently. While still being in its infancy, this neuroscience approach of binge drinking has already offered major insights concerning the development and extent of alcohol-related cerebral impairments. Hermens et al. (2013) have recently proposed a review of these studies exploring the brain correlates of excessive alcohol-consumption in young people. By proposing an extensive description of the current knowledge concerning the neuroscience of alcoholrelated problems in youth, this article undoubtedly constitutes an essential contribution to this blooming research field as it offers, for the first time, a comprehensive description of the neuropsychological and neuroimaging data collected during the lastdecade.More recentlyhowever, and incomplement to thebehavioural and functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results listedbyHermensandcolleagues, several studies have used electroencephalographic tools, and particularly event-related potentials (ERPs), to offer new insights on the cerebral correlates of binge drinking in young people. Due to their high sensitivity, ERPs have the potential to monitor brain electrical activity with a high temporal