Cannabis consumers exhibit higher susceptibility to become able to false memories
A brand new study published in the American journal with the highest impact factor in world-wide, Molecular Psychiatry, shows that consumers of cannabis are more prone to experiencing false memories.
The analysis was conducted by researchers from the Human Neuropsychopharmacology group at the Biomedical Research Institute of Hospital de Sant Pau and from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, in collaboration with all the Brain Cognition and Plasticity group of the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL - University of Barcelona). Among the known effects of have this drug is the memory problems it can cause. Long-Term consumers reveal more difficulties compared to the general populace in recollections that are recovering and retaining new info. The brand new study also shows that the continual utilization of cannabis causes distortions in memory, making it simpler for fictitious or unreal recollections to appear.
On occasions, the brain can remember Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) things which never occurred. Our recollection is made up of malleable procedure that is created progressively and consequently is subject to distortions or even false memories. These recollection "mistakes" are seen more often in several neurological and psychiatric disorders, but can be found in the healthy people, and become more common as we age. Some of the most frequent false memories we have are from our childhood which we believe to recall because the people around us have explained them to us over and over again of situations. Keeping an acceptable control over the "veracity" of our recollections is a complicated cognitive task which enables us to have our own awareness of reality as well as shapes our behaviour, based on past experiences.
In the study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers from Sant Pau and Bellvitge compared a group of long-term consumers of cannabis to a healthy control group on learning a succession of words while they worked. After a couple of minutes they were once more shown the original words, together with new words which were either semantically related or unrelated. All participants were requested to identify the words belonging to the original list. Cannabis consumers believed to have already seen the semantically associated new words to a degree that was higher than participants in the control group. By using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers found that cannabis consumers showed a lower activation in areas of the brain related to memory procedures and to the overall control of cognitive resources.
The analysis found memory deficiencies despite the fact that participants had quit consuming cannabis before participating in the study. Although they had not consumed the drug in a month, the more cannabis had been used by the patient throughout their life, essential to storing memories, the lower the level of activity in the hippocampus.
The outcomes show that cannabis consumers are somewhat more vulnerable to enduring memory distortions, even weeks after not have the drug. This suggests that cannabis has a prolonged effect on the brain mechanisms which enable us to distinguish between imagined and actual events. These recollection mistakes can cause problems because of the effects the testimonies of their victims and witnesses can have, for instance, in legal cases. Nevertheless, from a clinical viewpoint, the results point to the truth that a chronic utilization of cannabis could worsen issues with age-associated memory loss.