Marijuana is one of the most-used illegal drugs and new study has shown that long-term use could alter a person’s brain. According to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, using marijuana at an early age could have long-term consequences on your brain and it may even lower your IQ. The study picked 48 marijuana http://www.naij.com/tag/1727-marijuana.html users who all started smoking between age 14 and 30. On average they used marijuana three times a day and some said they had been using it for 10 years, although some had been smoking pot for three decades.They were compared to a group of 62 nonusers of the same basic age and gender. All gave urine samples. All had an MRI scan and all went through IQ testing. The people who regularly used marijuana had IQ’s that were five points lower, on average, than the nonusers in the study, although there is no definitive proof that marijuana alone was to blame for the lower IQ. The research found that compared to nonusers, those who started smoking marijuana as early as age 14 have less brain volume, or gray matter, in the orbitofrontal cortex (a region in the frontal lobes of the brain that is involved in decision-making and assessing the expected rewards or punishments of an action).
