Teens today are smoking less and drinking less than they used to – but they areusing cannabis more . A small under35 percentof American tenth grader have attempt it at least once as it increasingly becomes theirfirst drug of selection .
While there arecountless studiesexamining the effect of marihuana on the teenage brain ( tomixedresults ) , very few have believe possible ramifications of low - tier use of goods and services . That is something researchers at the University of Vermont ( UVM ) want to change and so they commence by attend at morphological change to the brain in stripling after just one or two smokes . The discipline was published inThe Journal of Neuroscience .
The bad news is that smoking cannabis just once or twice may be enough to change the structure of areas linked to emotion and retentiveness . Though the researcher are not yet certain what exactly these changes mean in practical footing .
The study involved a radical of 14 - year - olds from Ireland , England , France , and Germany , who were each part of a foresightful - condition projection called IMAGEN . Within this mathematical group , were 46 teens who had reported using hemp once or twice before their fourteenth birthday .
Scans revealed that there were eminent volumes of gray matter in cannabinoid receptors , a group of cell membranereceptorsinvolved in appetite , pain - sensation , humor , and memory , in those who had taken cannabis , even at such low level . The most detectable change were in areas called the amygdala ( associate with fear and other emotion - related processes ) and the hippocampus ( connect with memory evolution and spacial ability ) .
" consume just one or two joint seems to exchange gray matter book in these young adolescents , " senior generator Hugh Garavan , UVM professor of psychopathology , said in astatement .
These alteration to the structure of the brain occurred even after keep in line for variable like sex , socioeconomic position , and personality traits as well as nicotine and alcohol economic consumption , suggesting they are a unmediated consequence of cannabis consumption .
Garavan points out that at this eld , our brains go through a period of " pruning " . That is , it gets thinner as it refines and ameliorate its synaptic connections . Garavan suggests that smoking cannabis disrupts this outgrowth .
It would explain why gray affair in the cannabis user was thick than the gray matter in the non - users . However , in good order now it is just a hypothesis . It may also be that using ganja lead to thedevelopment of more neurons . It ’s also not entirely readable what this increase in hoary matter mean , practically speaking . Is it enough to negatively affect memory geological formation , for object lesson ?
That ’s something succeeding studies will have to examine , along with the effect of different potencies of the drug and the age of first use . However , it ’s no doubt something we ’ll take heed more of as land across the US lookto legalizethe drug .
