WIKIMEDIA, BOGDAN GIUSCAHeavy pot smokers, especially those who began using the drug in their early teens, may experience substantive alterations in brain structure, according to researchers in Texas and New Mexico. The team of scientists used MRI to measure the brains of 48 regular marijuana users who started smoking the drug between age 14 and 30. Comparing the users’ brains to those of 62 nonsmokers, they found that the weed smokers had smaller orbitofrontal cortices, the brain region that plays a major role in decision making.
“The younger the individual started using, the more pronounced the changes,” said Francesca Filbey, the study’s principal investigator and an associate professor at the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, told CNN. “Adolescence is when the brain starts maturing and making itself more adult-like, so any exposure to toxic substances can set the course for how your brain ends up.” Fibley and her colleagues published the research in PNAS on Monday (November 10).
But the researchers also found that the altered brains of users seemed to compensate for orbitofronal cortex shrinkage by increases in white matter, which may improve connectivity within other brain regions. “We found that while the orbitofrontal cortex was smaller, there was greater functional and ...
