According to a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry, cannabis usage in teens may likely affect a still developing brain and the region most at risk that helps decision making.
Matthew Albaugh, a psychologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington, was part of a team that scanned teens’ brains with an MRI machine before and after they started to use marijuana.
The study included 799 teens in Germany, France, Ireland and England and participants had their first scan at age 14.
Nobody reported using marijuana at this point but five years later, the teens returned for a second scan. Now 369 of the adolescents said they had tried cannabis.
About three-quarters of these said they had done so at least 10 times.
The scan revealed that one part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, changed more in cannabis users than non-users.
The prefrontal cortex sits right behind the forehead and above the eyes and is involved in decision-making and other tasks.
The more cannabis that teens used, the faster the prefrontal cortex thinned, Albaugh’s team found. It should be noted that the teen study does not prove that cannabis caused the faster thinning. But it adds to growing evidence that early cannabis use may affect brain development.
