Community | January 05, 2012 | 5 comments

Hey Mr. Prsident; Marijuana Improves Mental Sharpness In Middle-Aged Men: Study (Now Where is that "Executive Order" Form When You Need it?)

source: http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/01/marijuana_improves_mental_sharpness_in_middle-aged.php

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Anonmaly
Not only does smoking marijuana not "burn you out," but it's downright good for your brain. Yet more scientific evidence -- this time, that it actually appears to improve cognitive functioning among middle-aged men -- is now available, thanks to a new medical study.

Researchers looked at a large sample of 8,992 men who "used drugs," mostly cannabis, at age 42 and then again at age 50, reports Dennis Romero at LA Weekly. The men were tested to measure their level of brain functioning.

Surprise, surprise -- the Brits who had used illegal drugs did just as well -- or slightly better! -- than the chaps who had never "used drugs" at all.

When current and past drug users were lumped together as one group, their scores tended to be better than those of non-users. That advantage was small, researchers said, and might be due to the fact that people who have tried drugs tend to be better educated than those who haven't.

"A positive association was observed between ever (past or current) illicit drug use and cognitive functioning," the study's authors concluded in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Marijuana was by far the most commonly used substance among participants of the study -- performed by Alex Dregan of King's College London, reports Amy Norton at Reuters.

"At the population level, it does not appear that current illicit drug use is associated with impaired cognitive functioning in early middle age," an abstract of the study concludes.

Other drugs that were asked about included amphetamines, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, cocaine and ecstasy, but only three to eight percent of study participants said they'd ever tried those.

A small subset of participants who claimed they had been treated for their drug use -- which could suggest heavy or addicted drug use, or perhaps harder drugs of choice -- did not fare as well cognitively at 50, but there were so few of them, it was impossible to draw meaningful conclusions, the study's authors said.

"In a Western population of occasional drug users, this is what you'd expect to see," said John Halpern, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who has studied the potential cognitive effects of drugs.

"In some ways, this is not surprising," Dr. Halpern said. "The brain is resilient."

The study's findings support the idea that the effects of marijuana and perhaps other drugs are only temporary, and that cognition isn't damaged once the effects wear off.


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5 comments // Hey Mr. Prsident; Marijuana Improves Mental Sharpness In Middle-Aged Men: Study (Now Where is that "Executive Order" Form When You Need it?)

  • Milieu
    • 0
      Milieu  

    • Simply put::::: THC = BAD
      CBD = maybe good.

      "The authors used functional MRI images to study each participant on three occasions after administration of Δ9-THC, CBD or placebo. Study participants performed a visual oddball task of pressing buttons according to the direction arrows on a screen were pointing, as a measure of attentional salience processing.

      "Pairwise comparisons revealed that Δ9-THC significantly increased the severity of psychotic symptoms compared with placebo and CBD whereas there was no significant difference between the CBD and placebo conditions," the authors conclude.

      Δ9-THC had a greater effect than placebo on reaction time to nonsalient relative to salient stimuli. This was associated with modulation of both prefrontal and striatal function by Δ9-THC, augmenting (increasing) activation in the former region and attenuating (weakening) it in the latter.

      "Moreover, in the present study, the magnitude of Δ9-THC's effect on response times to nonsalient stimuli was correlated with its effect on activation in the right caudate, the region where the physiological effect of Δ9-THC was linked to its induction of psychotic symptoms," the authors write.

      They conclude that "collectively, these observations suggest that Δ9-THC may increase the aberrant attribution of salience and induce psychotic symptoms through its effects on the striatum and lateral prefrontal cortex."

      When the effects of CBD were contrasted with Δ9-THC and placebo with respect to the visual task there was a "significant effect" in the left caudate with CBD augmenting (increasing) the response and Δ9-THC attenuating (weakening) it.

      "These effects suggest that CBD may also influence the effect of cannabis use on salience processing – and hence psychotic symptoms – by having an opposite effect, enhancing the appropriate response to salient stimuli," the authors wrote."

      http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/jaaj-see122911.php

    • 5 months ago
  • infiniteblackbox
  • infiniteblackbox
    • 0
      infiniteblackbox  

    • Would like to have more parameters from study.
      Level of education of participants.
      How often did they partake.
      How much did they partake.
      Was it Sativa or Indica.
      Diet of participants.
      Who funded this study.

      All legitimate questions when making a sensational statement such as this.

      And before you misconstrue my stance and flame me i am 50 and have smoked regularly since i was 14.
      I am very much pro legalization.
      It is extremely easy to publish study findings to slant one way or the other.
      Depends what side you are on.

    • 5 months ago
  • tverdell
    • 0
      tverdell  

    • If you change mental awareness to sex drive, marijuana would be legalized within the hour.

      I don't think guys care about mental awareness so much.

    • 5 months ago
  • dudefromtherock
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