http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/health/pot-and-your-brain/index.html 11-10-14 Nothing new, media has always been used as an outlet to keep the stigma against pot. but I thought they gave up on the whole IQ Bullshit, thats like 60 years old now aint it?
More terrible research hyjacked by the media for attention. \n\n \nSo basically the study didn't prove anything. All it did was tell us that adolescents shouldn't be using cannabis, something most of us already know.
As a stoner for close to 50 years , if the shrinks the brain story were true, wouldn't be able to walk & chew gum simultaneously by now.
Even though the number of studies aiming to find negative effects of canabis is far greater than that of those aiming to study the positive, we still know of far more positive effects, than negative. But until cannabis is completely legalized, and accepted - and maybe even after that point - there will always be people clinging to whatever few negative studies exist, no matter how illigitimate they are, to help their failing argument; so I can't say I'm surprised. It's funny though, how beneficial bud can be for the brain, or so findings appear to indicate. I recently suffered a minor concussion, and did some research on the topic. One study done on traumatic brain injury patients was to test for THC upon arrival at the hospital, and monitor survival rates (this is the best study they can do, due to state/federal laws). Patients that came into the hospital with THC in their systems had a far higher survival rate (at least 15% higher, maybe 20%, can't remember). It's believed bud can greatly benefit a person recovering from traumatic brain injury, by reducing brain swelling, and relieving stress, which are crucial to recovery. I went a little off topic there ...
I'll present Carl Sagan, RIP, as our first defensive evidence, exhibit A. Then for the "weed makes you lazy" potshots we'll present Michael Phelps and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wonder if these silly prohibs have realized their own dear pharma/biotech companies are gobbling up medical-use patents as we speak. Most notably the research of "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants." These silly studies are eventually only going to prove one thing - cannabis use does not damage the mind, it only protects it and via neurogenesis and antioxidant protection (reducing mind crippling inflammatory damage) may even make you smarter in the long run. As of now, and for a while now, the science is on our side here.
It's like coffee and eggs, every few months they're either totally good for you or totally bad. Screw that, I like coffee, eggs and weed and have for decades. They work for me, and I'll use them regardless.
lol...I work at the research center where these recent studies came from. I don't work with the particular scientist who ran them, though (Dr. Filbey). She's not a true scholar. She's very smart, but she's only studying this topic for the money and media exposure. As you all have probably noted, these studies are purely correlational. They aren't controlled experiments. They simply take a group of people who smoke a lot, take another group of people who don't smoke, scan their brains, and look for anatomical and physiological differences between the groups. It's a classic example of how correlation doesn't imply causation, because even if you do observe differences, you can't be sure that the differences are strictly attributable to the smoking. Not only that, but they found no associations with cognitive ability. That is a huge point that is being largely overlooked. Ask yourself: Why does it matter that you have reduced grey matter in your brain if it has no apparent consequences on your actual mental abilities? If I ever get the chance to run these sorts of studies myself, I would do it very differently. I would bring people into the lab (obviously in a state where it's legal), have them get high in the lab (this is crucial so that you can control the dosage across subjects), and give them several tests of specific cognitive ability (for example, I'm interested in how getting high can alter one's perception of time). Then I would bring those same people back into the lab a week later and give them the same tests while sober (counterbalancing the order), so that we would be comparing performance with a repeated-measures design. That would be real science.
don't forget your control group but also you should probably have them take similar test before getting high, shortly after, a week a later. also it would be interesting to work with people who have maybe smoked a lot or maybe not at all as various groups. because a daily user would certainly perform differently from someone who is a non-user or an occasional (once every two months user).
If you run across that study again, please post a link! Was it this one? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25264643 Here are a few more links on cannabis as a neuroprotectant http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC20965/ http://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/17/6475.full http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11517236 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2931550/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2435344/