New evidence of harm of marijuana

Alcohol and marijuana in adolescence is bad for the state of conduction system of the brain. About it in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, say researchers from the University of California in San Diego (USA).




The brain in adolescents immature, and therefore particularly sensitive to the influence of many different factors. To check how it will be affected by the substances, the researchers in the course of a year and a half has seen nearly a hundred boys and girls from 16 to 20 years. About half of them regularly drank alcohol, and "grass", the other "dabbled" and the other to a minimum or not used at all.




Brain test periodically scanned using diffusion MRI (only on each person had about 180 images). In addition, conducted Toxicological analyses, the researchers also asked them how often they "consume". The results showed that those who regularly drank and was Smoking, the brain has slowed down the formation of white matter. His form bundles of axons with which different areas of the brain communicate by passing information. If these axonia "bus" not too functional brain works discoordinating that, in particular, may affect the behavior - such as poor self-control.




Of course, all subjects initially differed in the degree of development of the white matter in the brain. However, as the authors write, half marijuana and alcohol are so strongly influenced the architecture of the brain that individual differences on this background became insignificant.




Note that such studies have already tried to, but almost always it was just for a single measurement, the results of which could equally well be attributed to how alcohol and other factors like the source of individual differences. This time the researchers decided to prevent possible ambiguity in interpretation, following the dynamics of changes in the structure of the brain for quite a long time.




Source: science.compulenta.ru

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