Cannabis customers exhibit higher susceptibility in order to false memories

A brand new study published in the American journal with the maximum impact factor in world-wide, Molecular Psychiatry, reveals that consumers of cannabis are more prone to experiencing false memories.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Human Neuropsychopharmacology group in 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 recollection problems it can cause. Persistent consumers show more difficulties than the general citizenry in retaining new information and recovering memories. The brand new study also reveals that the continual use of cannabis causes distortions in memory, which makes it easier for fantastic or false memories to seem.

On occasions, the brain can recall things that never occurred. Our recollection consists of a malleable process which is created increasingly and thus is subject to distortions or even false memories. These recollection "mistakes" are seen more often in several neurological and psychiatric illnesses, but can be observed in the healthy population, and become more common as we age. Some of the very common false memories we have are from our childhood which we believe to recall as the people around us have described them to us over and over again of situations. Keeping an adequate control over the "veracity" of our memories is a complex cognitive task which allows us to have our own sense of reality and also shapes our behavior, 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 series 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 asked to identify the words belonging to the original list. Cannabis consumers considered to have already seen the connected new words 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 associated with memory procedures and to the overall control of cognitive resources by using magnetic resonance imaging.

The study post traumatic stress disorder found memory deficiencies regardless of the fact that participants had stopped consuming cannabis 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, the lower the degree of activity in the hippocampus, essential to keeping memories.

The results show that cannabis consumers are more vulnerable to enduring memory distortions weeks after not consuming the drug. This suggests that cannabis has a protracted effect on the brain mechanisms which enable us to differentiate between actual and fantastic events. These memory errors can cause difficulties due to the effects the testimonies of their casualties and witnesses can have, for example, in legal cases. Nevertheless, from a clinical standpoint, the results point to the fact that a long-term utilization of cannabis could worsen issues with age-associated memory loss.