Journal
PHARMACOLOGY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BEHAVIOR
Volume 72, Issue 1-2, Pages 237-250Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/S0091-3057(01)00771-7
Keywords
brain; cerebellum; chronic use; hippocampus; human; marijuana; memory; positron emission tomography; prefrontal cortex; regional cerebral blood flow
Funding
- NCRR NIH HHS [RR00059] Funding Source: Medline
- NIDA NIH HHS [DA10554] Funding Source: Medline
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It is uncertain whether frequent marijuana use adversely affects human brain function. Using positron emission tomography (PET), memory-related regional cerebral blood floe was compared in frequent marijuana users and nonusing control subjects after 26+ h of monitored abstention. Memory-related blood flow in marijuana users, relative to control subjects, showed decreases in prefrontal cortex, increases in memory-relevant regions of cerebellum, and altered lateralization in hippocampus. Marijuana users differed most in brain activity related to episodic memory encoding. In learning a word list to criterion over multiple trials, marijuana users, relative to control subjects, required means of 2.7 more presentations during initial learning and 3.1 more presentations during subsequent relearning. In single-trial recall, marijuana users appeared to rely more on short-term memory, recalling 23% more than control subjects from the end of a list, but 19% less from the middle. These findings indicate altered memory-related brain function in marijuana users. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
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