Bad news!
You may also want to read: Smoking Cannabis in the Home Increases Odds of Detectable Levels in Children (Caveat: I did not read this article)
Like alcohol, too much cannabis consumption is not good for your health! Modesty is paramount!
Maybe we should put a warning label on cannabis? What is good for alcohol ... Caution: Irony.
"... As cannabis legalization expands globally, its use has surged, with nearly 200 million people consuming it annually. While many view cannabis as harmless, emerging evidence tells a different story.
Studies show that cannabis can impair memory, decision-making, and other critical cognitive functions, raising concerns about its long-term effects on brain health. This is particularly relevant in an era where cannabis potency has increased dramatically.
Despite prior research, knowledge gaps persist regarding how cannabis use—both recent and cumulative—affects different areas of brain function. ...
Among participants, 8.8% reported heavy lifetime cannabis use, which was significantly associated with reduced brain activation during working memory tasks. ..."
From the key points and abstract:
"Key Points
Question: Are recent cannabis use and lifetime cannabis use associated with differences in brain function during cognitive tasks?
Findings: In this cross-sectional study of 1003 young adults, heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with lower brain activation during a working memory task; this association remained after removing individuals with recent cannabis use. These results were not explained by differences in demographic variables, age at first cannabis use, alcohol use, or nicotine use.
Meaning: These findings suggest that cannabis use is associated with short- and long-term brain function outcomes, especially during working memory tasks.
Abstract
Importance
Cannabis use has increased globally, but its effects on brain function are not fully known, highlighting the need to better determine recent and long-term brain activation outcomes of cannabis use.
Objective
To examine the association of lifetime history of heavy cannabis use and recent cannabis use with brain activation across a range of brain functions in a large sample of young adults in the US.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This cross-sectional study used data (2017 release) from the Human Connectome Project (collected between August 2012 and 2015). Young adults (aged 22-36 years) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), urine toxicology, and cannabis use data were included in the analysis. Data were analyzed from January 31 to July 30, 2024.
Exposures
History of heavy cannabis use was assessed using the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism, with variables for lifetime history and diagnosis of cannabis dependence. Individuals were grouped as heavy lifetime cannabis users if they had greater than 1000 uses, as moderate users if they had 10 to 999 uses, and as nonusers if they had fewer than 10 uses. Participants provided urine samples on the day of scanning to assess recent use. Diagnosis of cannabis dependence (per Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria) was also included.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Brain activation was assessed during each of the 7 tasks administered during the functional MRI session (working memory, reward, emotion, language, motor, relational assessment, and theory of mind). Mean activation from regions associated with the primary contrast for each task was used. The primary analysis was a linear mixed-effects regression model (one model per task) examining the association of lifetime cannabis and recent cannabis use on the mean brain activation value.
Results
The sample comprised 1003 adults (mean [SD] age, 28.7 [3.7] years; 470 men [46.9%] and 533 women [53.1%]). A total of 63 participants were Asian (6.3%), 137 were Black (13.7%), and 762 were White (76.0%).
For lifetime history criteria, 88 participants (8.8%) were classified as heavy cannabis users, 179 (17.8%) as moderate users, and 736 (73.4%) as nonusers. Heavy lifetime use (Cohen d = −0.28 [95% CI, −0.50 to −0.06]; false discovery rate corrected P = .02) was associated with lower activation on the working memory task. Regions associated with a history of heavy use included the anterior insula, medial prefrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Recent cannabis use was associated with poorer performance and lower brain activation in the working memory and motor tasks, but the associations between recent use and brain activation did not survive false discovery rate correction. No other tasks were associated with lifetime history of heavy use, recent use, or dependence diagnosis.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this study of young adults, lifetime history of heavy cannabis use was associated with lower brain activation during a working memory task. These findings identify negative outcomes associated with heavy lifetime cannabis use and working memory in healthy young adults that may be long lasting."
Figure 4. Lifetime History of Cannabis Use and Activation During the Working Memory Task
A, Brain images depicting regions and effect size. Each of the 4 regions comprised in the working memory task summary was examined separately as a post hoc analysis to determine which regions were associated with cannabis history. The brain image depicts the effect size of the comparison between heavy and nonusers for each of the 4 regions
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