| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 健康促進與衛生教育學系 === 106 === In recent ten years, there was dramatically increasing non-medical use of ketamine in Taiwan. Through the action on N-methyl d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, ketamine was reported to impair the neurocognitive function, and cause deficits in working memory robustly.
Between 2015 to 2017, at Taiwan Drug Prevention and Control Center in Taipei and Taichung, we included 194 ketamine users, aged 20-40 and 77 same-aged smokers but not ketamine users (healthy group, H) as control. To validate the impact of ketamine use on neurocognition, we not only presented the demographic data but also use the tools including Addiction Severity Index (ASI, McLellan et al., 1992), Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire (FTQ) and N-back task (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Perrig & Meier, 2010) as psychometric measurement.
Demographically, of all participants, the gender was male predominant (81.9%), the mean age was 25.52 (±4.72), average years in education was 11.65 (±2.30), and rate of employment was 81.9%. The results demonstrate that ketamine abusers have poorer performance on the higher value N-back tasks. Compared to the control group, the ketamine abusers had significantly decreased rates of accuracy on the 1- and 2-back task (81.4% vs. 87.8%, p < 0.05; 66.3% vs. 76.5%, p < 0.01), and increased rates of mistakes on N-back tasks. Reaction times of accuracy, however, were affected solely by age and gender.
In this study, we confirmed the negative impact of ketamine on working memory, and the effect was much more profound when involving tasks that are more complex. We expect ketamine users to stop or reduce the frequency, dose and duration of abuse, to avoid performing risk-taking behavior and risk of accidental injury. With established awareness of potential long-term negative effects of ketamine, young people should having a healthier psychosocial life, educational and professional achievement.
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