Here's Why You Should Postpone Trying Weed Until Your Brain Is Fully Developed

How does marijuana use impact our adaptive behavior?

According to a new study conducted by University of Melbourne researchers and published in the Journal Plos One, mere usage is not what matters the most, but rather the age of the individual when they started consuming cannabis.

The study reveals that individuals who are long-time users from a young age are not very good at learning and correcting their mistakes.

Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney and lead study author, Gezelle Dali told ACM that people who started consuming marijuana earlier in life were less likely to work on correcting their mistakes, even if they were aware of making them, reported the Canberra Times.

"A lot of work has shown that there is some effect of age of onset, so the earlier that they start using cannabis the more likely they are to show impaired performance," Dali said. "That is likely to be a function of the fact that when you're young, your brain is still developing - it doesn't stop developing until you're about 25 years old."

According to Dali, the impact of marijuana on the brain could lead to behavioral impairment, shown in the study as poorer error processing. 

It is important to note that the researchers have not discovered any notable difference between marijuana and non-marijuana users, though it shows that the younger they began consuming weed the poorer their processing was. This means that overall cannabis use might not be directly connected to behavioral indices of performance monitoring, but that other aspects of cannabis use may play an important role in our error processing.

“While error awareness and correction rates did not differ between the groups, there was a significant effect of age of use onset on error correction in cannabis users,” the researchers wrote. “Further, the effect of error awareness was dependent on age of onset, and cannabis use-related frequency and harm.”

Photo: Benzinga edit with images by hainguyenrp, lindsayfox on Pixabay