Cannabis customers exhibit higher susceptibility in order to false memories
A new study published in the American journal with the maximum 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 PTSD Forum of the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL - University of Barcelona). One of the known consequences of consuming this drug is the recollection issues it can cause. Persistent consumers show more issues than the general populace in memories that are regaining and retaining new information. The new study also reveals that the chronic utilization of cannabis causes distortions in memory, making it easier for false or imagined recollections to appear.
On occasions, the brain can remember things that never happened. Our memory is made up of malleable procedure that is created increasingly and so is subject to distortions or even false memories. These memory "mistakes" are seen more often in several neurological and psychiatric disorders, but can 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 recall as the folks around us have explained them to us over and over again of situations. Keeping an acceptable control over the "veracity" of our memories is a complex cognitive task which enables us to have our own sense 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 succession of words, while they worked. After a couple of minutes they were 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 first list. Cannabis consumers believed to have already seen the new words that were related that were semantically to a higher degree than participants in the control group. Researchers found that cannabis consumers showed a lower activation in areas of the brain related to memory processes and to the overall control of cognitive resources by using magnetic resonance imaging.
The study found recollection deficiencies despite the fact that participants had stopped have cannabis one month before participating in the study. Although they had not have the drug in a month, the more cannabis had been used by the patient throughout their life, key to keeping memories, the lower the amount of activity in the hippocampus.
The results demonstrate that cannabis consumers are somewhat more exposed to suffering memory distortions, even weeks after not consuming the drug. This implies that cannabis has a prolonged effect on the brain mechanisms which enable us to discern between imaginary and actual events. These recollection mistakes can cause difficulties in legal cases, for example, because of the effects the testimonies of their victims as well as witnesses can have. However, from a clinical perspective, the results point to the fact that a long-term utilization of cannabis could worsen problems with age-related memory loss.