An optimist is the human personification of spring. ~Susan J. Bissonette
Forgetting to mail an important letter. Or forgetting an important appointment. A new study from British researchers suggests that for people who regularly use ecstasy or other illicit drugs, this simple memory lapse is common.
This research uncovered links between memory deficits and cocaine for the first time. It appears in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
The researchers wanted to explore the link between deficits in prospective memory and drug use. The research expands on previous studies, which have proved that ecstasy or multi-drug users are impaired in performing many cognitive tasks, including verbal and spatial exercises.
Prospective memory tasks can be either based in time or an event, which means that the external trigger to remember could be in response to an event, or because it is time to do something. This distinction is important because these memory jobs use somewhat different brain functions.
The researchers studied 42 users of ecstasy or other drugs (14 males, 28 females) and 31 non-users (5 males, 26 females) for the study. The results showed that recreational drugs, like ecstasy, or the regular use of several drugs, affect users’ memory functions, even when tests are controlled for marijuana or alcohol use.
The results of the study also suggested that users “possess some self-awareness of their memory lapses.” The researchers say that although this awareness exists, drug users may not know which drug is the culprit of the memory problems. “The present results suggest that these deficits are likely to be real rather than imagined and are evident in both time- and event-based prospective memory contexts,” said John Fisk, one of the researchers.
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