Marijuana smoking often begins in adolescence - and the timing could not be worse, suggests a new study.
Young adults who began the drug use regularly in their early teens assessment function of the brain as subjects at least 16 were significantly worse on cognitive tests when started performed smoking, scientists reported on Monday.
The findings presented at the annual meeting of the society for Neuroscience in San Diego, led researchers at the McLean Hospital to suspect that the young people developing brain can be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of marijuana.
"We must understand that the developing brain is not the same as the adult brain," said Dr. Staci A. Gruber, the paper the senior author and Director of the cognitive and clinical neuroimaging section of cerebral Imaging Center at the McLean, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.
The study relating to brain scans, was small, consisting of chronic from 35 marijuana smokers who were on average 22 years old. Smoking marijuana had begun twenty, regularly before the age of 16, during 15 began regularly at the age of 16 smoking or higher.All had similar levels of education and income.
The subjects were asked to an assessment of the Executive function - the brain processes responsible for planning and abstract thinking and understanding rules and inhibition inappropriate Aktionen.Der test - where participants were asked to sort cards with different shapes, numbers and colors - is a measure of cognitive flexibility, the ability to stay focused, follow responses rules and control impulsive.Dr. Gruber said those who began smoking marijuana at younger ages significantly lower on the test as those evaluated, the smoking later started in their teen years.She got correct less card sorting categories and more errors were gemacht.Sie also very much more likely to said their mistakes to give wrong answers, even after they were wrong to repeat.
15 Dr. Gruber, said, the brain is still changing and "the part the Executive function of the last part is modulated to develop."
There are other significant differences between the two groups of Raucher.Diejenigen the marijuana have been regularly use in their early teens had smoked more than twice as often as those smoking later begonnen.Die smoked early users also 14.7 grams per week, almost three times as much as the later smokers, 5.9 grams per week on average used said Dr. Gruber.
She attributed to still performance drive to legalizing marijuana in many countries age limits should contain the task for the early use of marijuana, not the more geraucht.Das, she added.
