Author: Laura Sanders / Source: Science News for Students
Taking a month-long break from marijuana helps clear away a memory fog from young people’s minds, a small study finds. The results show that marijuana impairs their ability to take in information.
The data also show this memory muddling may be reversible.The adolescent brain undergoes big changes for many years. This doesn’t end until people reach their mid-20s. Scientists have struggled to understand how marijuana affects this developing brain. One problem: They can’t ask people — especially minors — to use an illegal drug. But “you can do the opposite,” says Randi M. Schuster. “You can get kids who are currently using, and pay them to stop,” she notes. So she and her colleagues did just that.
As a neuropsychologist (NURR-oh-sy-KOLL-oh-jist), Schuster studies conditions and habits that can affect how the brain processes information. For the new study, her team recruited 88 Boston-area people, all 16- to 25-years old. Each reported he or she was already using marijuana at least once a week. The researchers offered 62 of these people money to quit for a month. How much money they got increased as the experiment went along. Top earners banked $585 for going a month pot-free.
These payments “worked exceptionally well,” says Schuster, who works at Massachusetts General…
The post Young people’s memory improves after stopping marijuana use appeared first on FeedBox.