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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (20534)	7/24/2012 6:43:25 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

WORKING MEMORY AND MARIJUANA USE The relationship between marijuana use and working memory deficits in the nonpsychiatric population is complex. Reviews 21, 22 of working memory function in psychiatrically healthy individuals who smoke marijuana regularly concluded that such individuals exhibit performance impairment on primary and secondary working memory tasks relative to healthy controls, and such impairments have been found to be associated with the self-reported frequency of marijuana smoking. 23, 24 However, such deficits have been found less consistently than in participants with schizophrenia only. When present in non-schizophrenic marijuana users, the impairment is generally of a less severe degree 21, 22 and is less stable 25 than is typically seen in participants with schizophrenia only. Thus, regular marijuana use in the natural ecology may be associated with modest and short-term deficits in working memory performance when participants are not acutely intoxicated. Of note, young marijuana smokers were found to exhibit alterations in activation of the prefrontal and parietal cortices in response to working memory tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging (under conditions of short-term marijuana abstinence) relative to non-using controls. 26, 27 This indicates functional alteration in brain regions relevant to the development of psychopathology in young marijuana smokers while they engaged their working memory. Although these studies of the residual sequelae of marijuana smoking suggest that marijuana smoking contributes to working memory deficits, the cross-sectional and correlational nature of the studies reviewed thus far do not allow an assessment of marijuana’s direct effects on working memory. ......... ncbi.nlm.nih.gov