Cannabis smoking during pregnancy can lead to abnormal brain structure in children, a new study has warned.
Compared to unexposed children, who were prenatally exposed to cannabis had a thick prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in complex cognition, decision making and working memory, the results showed.
smoking pot
It is estimated that two to thirteen percent of women worldwide use cannabis during pregnancy. Previous studies have identified behavioral consequences in the short and long term of prenatal exposure to cannabis, but the effects on brain morphology were unknown.
For the study, researchers used structural magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brains of 54 children, between six and eight years old, who were exposed prenatally to cannabis.
