In a new study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the memories of young rats was much more heavily impacted than the older rats given identical doses of amphetamines.
“Animals that were given the amphetamine during the adolescent time period were worse at tasks requiring working memory than adult animals that were given the same amount of amphetamine as adults,” study co-author and psychology professor Joshua Gulley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a school news release. “This tells us that their working memory capacity has been significantly altered by that pre-exposure to amphetamine…..Adolescence is a time when the brain is continuing to develop into its mature form, so drug exposure during this critical period could have long-lasting, negative consequences,” he said. “Our findings reveal that adolescents are particularly sensitive to the adverse effects of amphetamine on cognitive function and that these effects can persist well after drug use is discontinued.”
This research done in the rats also suggests that if it carries through in future studies with teenagers, teens who take amphetamines recreationally may be at a higher degree of risk because their doses would be at higher doses than those which would ordinarily be prescribed by doctors to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
SOURCE: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, news release, Oct. 21, 2009
