Cannabis customers exhibit higher susceptibility in order to false memories
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 study 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 consuming this drug is the recollection difficulties it can cause. Persistent consumers reveal more difficulties in relation to the overall public in memories that are regaining and retaining new info. The brand new study also reveals that PTSD online the continual utilization of cannabis causes distortions in memory, which makes it easier for recollections that are bogus or fantastic to seem.
On occasions, the brain can recall things which never occurred. Our memory consists of a malleable process that is created increasingly and therefore is subject to distortions or even false memories. These memory "mistakes" are seen more frequently in several neurological and psychiatric illnesses, but can also be detected in the healthy population, and become more common as we age. One of the very typical 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. Keeping an adequate control over the "veracity" of our recollections is a complex cognitive task which enables us to have our own awareness of reality as well as shapes our behaviour, predicated on past experiences.
In the study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers from Sant Pau and Bellvitge compared a group of chronic 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 first words, together with new words which were either semantically related or unrelated. All participants were requested to identify the words belonging to the initial list. Cannabis consumers believed to have seen the new words that were connected that were semantically to a higher degree than participants in the control group. Researchers discovered that cannabis consumers showed a lower activation in areas of the brain related to memory procedures and to the overall control of cognitive resources, by using magnetic resonance imaging.
The study found recollection deficiencies regardless of the fact that participants had ceased consuming cannabis before participating in the analysis. Although they had not consumed the drug in a month, the more cannabis had been used by the patient throughout their life, essential to keeping memories, the lower the level of action in the hippocampus.
The outcomes demonstrate that cannabis consumers are more exposed to enduring memory distortions weeks after not have the drug. This implies that cannabis has a protracted effect on the brain mechanisms which enable us to distinguish between actual and fictional events. These memory errors can cause issues in legal cases, for instance, because of the effects the testimonies of witnesses as well as their casualties can have. However, from a clinical standpoint, the results point to the truth that a long-term use of cannabis could worsen problems with age-associated memory loss.