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Smoking causes cognitive impairment in adolescents

February 1, 2005

Adolescents who smoke show impairment of memory and other cognitive functions, according to a Yale study in Biological Psychiatry. More than 4.5 million teenagers smoke cigarettes in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau. Leslie Jacobsen, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, and her research team tested working memory. This form of memory is used when keeping information in mind and manipulating it. They also evaluated verbal learning and memory, attention, mood, symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and tobacco cravings in 41 adolescent daily smokers and 32 nonsmokers. The groups were similar in age, gender and education.



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