A new study published in the American journal with the highest impact factor in global, 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 the Brain Cognition and Plasticity group of the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL - University of Barcelona). One of the known consequences of consuming this drug is the memory issues it can cause. Recurring consumers reveal more issues compared to the general citizenry in retaining new info and memories that are recovering. The new study also reveals the continual use of cannabis causes distortions in memory, which makes it easier for fictitious or unreal memories to appear.
On occasions, the brain can recall things which never occurred. Our memory is made up of malleable process which is created increasingly and hence is subject to distortions or even false memories. These memory "mistakes" are seen more often in several neurological and psychiatric illnesses, but can be detected in the healthy population, and become more common as we age. One of the very common false memories we have are from our youth which we believe to remember as the folks around us have clarified them to us over and over again of situations. Maintaining an adequate control over the "veracity" of our recollections is a complex cognitive task which allows us to have our own awareness of reality and also shapes our behaviour, based on previous encounters.
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 series of words while they worked. After several minutes they were once again shown the first words, together with new words which were either semantically related or unrelated. All participants were asked to identify the words belonging to the initial list. Cannabis consumers believed to have seen the semantically connected new words to a higher degree PTSD than participants in the control group. Researchers discovered that cannabis consumers revealed a lower activation in areas of the brain associated with memory procedures and to the general control of cognitive resources, by using magnetic resonance imaging.
The analysis found memory deficiencies despite the fact that participants had ceased consuming cannabis one month before participating in the analysis. Although they had not consumed the drug in a month, the more the patient had used cannabis throughout their life, key to keeping memories, the lower the degree of action in the hippocampus.
The outcomes demonstrate that cannabis consumers are somewhat more vulnerable to suffering memory distortions weeks after not have the drug. This suggests that cannabis has a protracted effect on the brain mechanisms which allow us to discern between actual and imagined events. These memory errors can cause problems in legal cases, for example, because of the effects the testimonies of witnesses and their casualties can have. However, from a clinical perspective, the results point to the truth that a continual utilization of cannabis could worsen problems with age-related memory loss.
