Adolescents who use marijuana regularly are at greater risks of developing mental disorders, including schizophrenia, researchers say.
People suffering from schizophrenia experience difficulty differentiating real from the unreal, thinking clearly and dealing with social situations normally. They also lack normal emotional responses. According to the records, about 2.4 million Americans are affected by schizophrenia. The condition usually starts appearing during adolescence.
A team of researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine looked at the hidden risks associated with marijuana consumption in adolescence and found that regular use of the psychoactive drug left lasting damages on the brain and its functioning. However, they couldn't find any such association with the use of marijuana in adulthood.
"Adolescence is the critical period during which marijuana use can be damaging," lead author of the study, Sylvina Mullins Raver, said in a news release. "We wanted to identify the biological underpinnings and determine whether there is a real, permanent health risk to marijuana use."
Researchers reached their conclusion after conducting experiments on young and adult mice. The young mice were mildly exposed to marijuana for 20 days. When the mice reached adulthood, the researchers examined function of the cortical oscillations or the repetitive neural activity in the central nervous system. The drug exposure during the early years had altered the cortical oscillations and the mice displayed "impaired cognitive abilities."
A closer examination of the brain regions showed that drug exposure during younger years affected frontal parts of the brain that develops during adolescence and manages planning and impulse control.
The cortical oscillations that play important role in different brain functions are impaired in people suffering from mental disorders.
"The striking finding is that, even though the mice were exposed to very low drug doses, and only for a brief period during adolescence, their brain abnormalities persisted into adulthood," Raver, a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University, explained.
To find out the effects of marijuana use during adulthood, the team exposed adult mice to marijuana, but couldn't find similar results.
The study has been published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Senior author of the study Dr. Asaf Keller, Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, talks about the impact of marijuana on an adolescent's brain. Watch the Video below:
