Academics from the Collaboration for Drug and Alcohol Research Group in Northumbria\u2019s School of Life Sciences tested 28 social smokers \u2013 those who smoke around 20 cigarettes once or twice a week, typically when out at the weekend \u2013 28 people who smoke 10-15 cigarettes daily and 28 people who had never smoked on a video-based prospective memory test.<\/p>\n Participants were asked to remember a series of pre-determined actions at specific locations when viewing a short clip of a busy high street. For example, they were asked to remember to text a friend when passing a particular store.<\/p>\n In the first study of its kind, researchers found that both groups of smokers performed worse than those who had never smoked, with no difference according to the pattern of smoking<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Dr Tom Heffernan, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, who conducted the research with Dr Terence O\u2019Neill, said: \u201cSmoking-related memory decline in general has been linked with increases in accelerated cerebral degeneration such as brain shrinkage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis new research suggests that restricting smoking to weekends makes no difference \u2013 smoking damages your memory.\u201d<\/p>\n The study has been published in the Open Addiction Journal<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Northumbria University press release via AlphaGalileo: People who smoke only at weekends cause as much damage to their memory as those who smoke on a daily basis, according… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,4,6],"tags":[21,42,266,170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1735,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/SmokingCessation.jpg\" "\\"smoking")
People who smoke only at weekends cause as much damage to their memory as those who smoke on a daily basis<\/strong>, according to research from Northumbria University.<\/p>\n