Cannabis use may lead to false memories

London: Even as the medicinal values of cannabis are hotly debated the world over, chronic use of the drug can make you remember things that actually never happened, warns a study.

Chronic use of cannabis causes distortions in memory, making it easier for imaginary or false memories to appear, the findings showed.

"The present results indicate that long-term heavy cannabis users are at an increased risk of experiencing memory errors even when abstinent and drug-free," the study noted.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Biomedical Research Institute of Hospital de Sant Pau and from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, in collaboration with the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL - University of Barcelona) in Spain.

The researchers compared a group of chronic consumers of cannabis to a healthy control group while they worked on learning a series of words.

The researchers discovered that cannabis consumers showed a lower activation in areas of the brain related to memory procedures and to the general control of cognitive resources.

The study found memory deficiencies despite the fact that participants had stopped consuming cannabis one month before participating in the study.

Although they had not consumed the drug in a month, the more the patient had used cannabis throughout their life, the lower the level of activity in the hippocampus, key to storing memories.

From a clinical viewpoint, the results point to the fact that a chronic use of cannabis could worsen problems with age-related memory loss, the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, noted.