Steel Ryan W J, Miller John H, Sim Dalice A, Day Darren John
School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
Behav Pharmacol. 2011 Dec;22(8):837-46. doi: 10.1097/FBP.0b013e32834dbbb1.
Cannabis is the most popular illicit drug used by adolescents. Yet, there are only a few studies that have examined the effects of cannabis use on learning and memory during this sensitive and important neurodevelopmental stage. Male adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, 6 mg/kg) daily for 27 days and concurrently trained in a spatial learning and memory task. The chronic effects of cannabis use were specifically examined by assessing animal behaviour during the 'postacute' period (17 h after drug exposure), when minimal acute drug burden is expected to be present. The postacute period is a good model for cannabis use patterns in human adolescents. In addition, we investigated whether the hierarchical organization of working memory (chunking) was impaired by THC-treatment. We show that THC exposure impairs adolescent learning when tested in the postacute period, and that THC impairs the ability of animals to use a chunking strategy.
大麻是青少年使用的最流行的非法药物。然而，只有少数研究考察了在这个敏感且重要的神经发育阶段使用大麻对学习和记忆的影响。雄性青春期斯普拉格-道利大鼠每天接受Δ(9)-四氢大麻酚（THC，6毫克/千克）治疗，持续27天，并同时接受空间学习和记忆任务训练。通过评估动物在“急性后期”（药物暴露后17小时）的行为，专门研究了使用大麻的长期影响，此时预计急性药物负担最小。急性后期是人类青少年大麻使用模式的一个良好模型。此外，我们研究了THC治疗是否会损害工作记忆的层次组织（组块）。我们发现，在急性后期进行测试时，THC暴露会损害青少年的学习能力，并且THC会损害动物使用组块策略的能力。
