tranquilo
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2000
- Messages
- 1,077
Looks like its being quantitively being proved so go easy on your brains people, memories are precious....er...precious, er, things, y'know...
from the British Psychological Society as reported in The Guardian
Regular users of the drug ecstasy are inflicting so much damage to their memory they frequently forget simple tasks and routinely lose their train of thought while talking, according to UK research.
People who use the recreational drug regularly suffer significant impairment to all aspects of their everyday memory, finds the research, which will add to concerns over the worrying side effects of ecstasy. The drug is reported to be used by between 200,000 and 500,000 people in Britain, each weekend.
The research is among few studies of this subject, but previous work has revealed the detrimental effects the drug has on recall and working memory. This is the first time a danger to "prospective memory" - the planning centre of the brain which keeps most people's lives in order - has been revealed.
A team of psychologists, led by Tom Heffernan of the University of Northumbria, looked at how ecstasy use affected the memories of clubbers in the north-east. They found that people who took ecstasy regularly, between eight and 10 times a month, had significant memory problems; they would forget such things as setting their alarm clocks, and they had difficulty with long-term episodic memory, forgetting to pass on messages.
The drug users also had problems with internally "queued memory", failing to remember what they were saying half way through a sentence. "The research adds to the growing body of evidence which suggests there are psychological dangers associated with taking ecstasy. For example, people have found it can contribute to depression, that it can make users more irritable, and this study suggests it can impair your everyday memory," said Dr Heffernan.
The research, made public at the British Psychological Society's centenary conference in Glasgow yesterday, was carried out by comparing the memories of 40 adults, aged 23 on average, who took ecstasy regularly. Thirty-nine others were included who did not take the drug. Allowances were made for the tendency of ecstasy users to use more than one drug. The results were replicated in a second study by one of Dr Heffernan's students.
Dr Heffernan is not sure why ecstasy impairs the memory of regular users, but research in associated areas points to a biological explanation.
It is feared that regular use may cause damage to the frontal and pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which are used in planning and strategy.
If the explanation lies in biology, Dr Heffernan said, it could have particularly worrying consequences for young ecstasy users.
"There is some evidence that the frontal cortex is still developing in teenagers and adolescents," he said. "If your brain is still developing in parts, there is a strong possibility you could be seriously damaging this development with ecstasy use."
The researchers plan to expand their study to see if the damage to memory is permanent or whether the brain can be rehabilitated.
British Psychological Society centenary annual conference
from the British Psychological Society as reported in The Guardian
Regular users of the drug ecstasy are inflicting so much damage to their memory they frequently forget simple tasks and routinely lose their train of thought while talking, according to UK research.
People who use the recreational drug regularly suffer significant impairment to all aspects of their everyday memory, finds the research, which will add to concerns over the worrying side effects of ecstasy. The drug is reported to be used by between 200,000 and 500,000 people in Britain, each weekend.
The research is among few studies of this subject, but previous work has revealed the detrimental effects the drug has on recall and working memory. This is the first time a danger to "prospective memory" - the planning centre of the brain which keeps most people's lives in order - has been revealed.
A team of psychologists, led by Tom Heffernan of the University of Northumbria, looked at how ecstasy use affected the memories of clubbers in the north-east. They found that people who took ecstasy regularly, between eight and 10 times a month, had significant memory problems; they would forget such things as setting their alarm clocks, and they had difficulty with long-term episodic memory, forgetting to pass on messages.
The drug users also had problems with internally "queued memory", failing to remember what they were saying half way through a sentence. "The research adds to the growing body of evidence which suggests there are psychological dangers associated with taking ecstasy. For example, people have found it can contribute to depression, that it can make users more irritable, and this study suggests it can impair your everyday memory," said Dr Heffernan.
The research, made public at the British Psychological Society's centenary conference in Glasgow yesterday, was carried out by comparing the memories of 40 adults, aged 23 on average, who took ecstasy regularly. Thirty-nine others were included who did not take the drug. Allowances were made for the tendency of ecstasy users to use more than one drug. The results were replicated in a second study by one of Dr Heffernan's students.
Dr Heffernan is not sure why ecstasy impairs the memory of regular users, but research in associated areas points to a biological explanation.
It is feared that regular use may cause damage to the frontal and pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which are used in planning and strategy.
If the explanation lies in biology, Dr Heffernan said, it could have particularly worrying consequences for young ecstasy users.
"There is some evidence that the frontal cortex is still developing in teenagers and adolescents," he said. "If your brain is still developing in parts, there is a strong possibility you could be seriously damaging this development with ecstasy use."
The researchers plan to expand their study to see if the damage to memory is permanent or whether the brain can be rehabilitated.
British Psychological Society centenary annual conference
