Meth damages adolescent brains

Teens who chronically use methamphetamine suffer damage to a part of the brain critical for cognitive ability, scientists have found.
Researchers from the University of Utah and their colleagues in South Korea found that adolescents who chronically use methamphetamine suffer greater and more widespread alterations in their brain than adults who chronically abuse the drug.
In the study of chronic adolescent and adult meth abusers in South Korea, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans showed decreased thickness in the gray matter of younger users' frontal cortex, the area of the brain believed to direct people's ability to organise, reason and remember things, known as the executive function.

A different type of MRI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), indicated alterations to the adolescents' white matter, meaning possible damage to neurons - the cells that relay information via electrical signals from one part of the brain to another.
The gray and white matter of chronic adult meth users showed far less damage than that of the adolescents.
The researchers found the evidence of damage to cortical thickness in the frontal cortex of adolescent users alarming.

"It's particularly unfortunate that meth appears to damage that part of the brain, which is still developing in young people and is critical for cognitive ability," said In Kyoon Lyoo of Ewha W University in Seoul, South Korea.

"Damage to that part of the brain is especially problematic because adolescents' ability to control risky behaviour is less mature than that of adults.
"The findings may help explain the severe behavioural issues and relapses that are common in adolescent drug addiction," Lyoo said.
The study is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.