Did they remember to do the one month follow up? Any idea what the results were?
If they have it looks like it hasn't been published yet. The New Scientist article was from March 2006.
Pot-smoking your way to memory loss
18 March 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
"IT DEFINITELY fogs your brain," says Lambros Messinis of the University Hospital of Patras in Greece, on the effects of marijuana. That, of course, is why people smoke it in the first place. What Messinis claims, however, is that it has a more serious effect: he says that long-term users gradually become worse at learning and remembering things.
Messinis and his colleagues compared the mental abilities of 20 people who had smoked dope at least four times weekly for an average of 15 years with 20 shorter-term users averaging 7 years of use, and 24 controls. None of the subjects had smoked for at least 24 hours before the test, and Messinis used a standard psychological method to control for differences in intelligence before they started using marijuana.
The veteran users performed worst in memory tests: asked to recall lists of 15 words they had seen earlier, for example, they averaged seven, compared with nine for the shorter-term users and 12 for the controls (Neurology, vol 66, p 737).
"The extent to which such impairments persist with ongoing abstinence remains contentious," says Nadia Solowij of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Messinis plans to find out if the effect is reversible by retesting the same groups after they have abstained for at least a month. Dope smokers should watch this space - if they remember.
From issue 2543 of New Scientist magazine, 18 March 2006, page 21
newscientist.com
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