Teen pot smokers have poor long-term memory later on: Study

24 Hours Vancouver, 3 Mar 2015 -- QMI AGENCY
People who smoke lots of pot in their teens have poor long-term memory as adults, a new study suggests. Researchers from Northwestern University Chicago linked the poorin memory performance of who smoked marithose juana daily for about three years during their teens to an oddly shaped hippocampus, part of the brain responthe sible for memory.

 The study found the longer a person smoked pot as a teen, the more abnormal that part of the brain was when they were an adult. “The memory processes that appear to be affected by cannabis are ones that we every day to solve comuse problems and to susmon tain our relationships with friends and family,” senior author Dr. John Csernansky said in a press release. The researchers found former marijuana smokers 18% worse on longscored term memory tests than those who never used the drug during their teens.

The study featured 97 participants, including a group who began smoking pot between 16 and 17 years old and did so for at least three years, as well people who never used marijuana, and schizophrenia sufferers who had smoked pot as teens and others who hadn’t.

At the time of the study, the former teen pot smokers hadn’t used it for about two years and were in their early 20s.

The participants took a memory test that involved listening to a series of stories for one minute. They were asked to remember as much as possible 20 to 30 minutes later. The study found young adults with schizophrenia who abused cannabis as teens performed about 26% worse on memory tests than adults with schizoyoung phrenia who never abused it.

The researchers said a longitudinal study is required definitively show if marito juana is responsible for the differences in the brain and memory.

"It is possible that the abnormal brain structures reveal a pre-existing vulnerreveal ability to marijuana abuse,” lead study author Matthew Smith said. “But evidence the longer the particithat were abusing marijuana, the greater the differences in hippocampus shape suggests marijuana may be the cause.”

The study was published Thursday in the journal Hippocampus .
— QMI AGENCY
Source: http://eedition.vancouver.24hrs.ca/epaper/viewer.aspx
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