Marijuana Use Takes Toll On Adolescent Brain Function, Research Finds

October 15, 2008

Brain imaging shows that the brains of teens that use marijuana are working harder than the brains of their peers who abstain from the drug.

At the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Boston, Mass., Krista Lisdahl Medina, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of psychology, presented collaborative research with Susan Tapert, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

Medina’s Oct. 12 presentation, titled, “Neuroimaging Marijuana Use and its Effects on Cognitive Function,” suggests that chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence – a critical period of ongoing brain development – is associated with poorer performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability. Medina says that’s evident even after a month of stopping marijuana use. She says that while recent findings suggest partial recovery of verbal memory functioning within the first three weeks of adolescent abstinence from marijuana, complex attention skills continue to be affected.

Krista Lisdahl Medina. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Cincinnati)

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