Doctors Discovered How The Brain Dies. Part 2 of 3

It’s not not guilty whether marijuana use caused the memory problems or people with memory problems tended to use marijuana. “The big $64000 question is whether these memory problems predate the marijuana use”. The ruminate on focused on nearly 100 participants sorted into four groups: healthy people who never used pot, healthy people who were former heavy pot smokers, people with schizophrenia who never used bay window and schizophrenics who were former heavy pot users. Researchers used MRI scans to study the structure of participants’ brains.

Both healthy and schizophrenic marijuana users showed shrinkage of regions far down in the brain that are associated with memory. “We found both of the marijuana-use groups had these parallel brain abnormalities”. Tests of working memory further found that marijuana users scored lower compared with non-users. Working tribute is the ability to remember and process information in the moment and, if needed, transfer it to long-term memory.

Poor working memory can lead to poor academic performance and problems with everyday life. Healthy clan who never used marijuana scored 37 times better, on average, than healthy users who had smoked in the past on memory tests, while “clean” schizophrenics scored nearly four times better than schizophrenic marijuana users. The boning up confirms earlier findings that showed memory loss in young marijuana users, said Dr Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, NY But Krakower said more mix needs to be done before it’s proven that marijuana actually causes changes in the brain.

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