According to a federally funded study published in the American Medical Association, brain processes such as working memory, reward processing and cognitive function are not impacted by using marijuana.
Working memory, which refers to the amount of information that is stored in the brain and used to execute cognitive tasks, has long been associated with being hindered by cannabis use. This makes the results of the study all the more surprising and could be the catalyst for a better understanding of how cannabis impacts brain health.
The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the journal JAMA Network Open, focused primarily on moderate cannabis consumption for medical symptoms. To conduct the study, 57 recently certified medical patients were observed via functional magnetic resonance imaging as a means to monitor the brain during tasks. After one year of cannabis consumption, researchers scanned the brains of the study participants to see how brain function had changed.
“After year-long cannabis use for medical symptoms, we did not observe functional differences during working memory, reward processing or inhibitory control tasks, or an association of changes in cannabis use frequency with brain activation. Similarly, no significant changes in behavioral performance emerged,” the study found.
Similarly, the study noted that “our results suggest that adults who use cannabis, generally with light-to-moderate patterns, for such symptoms experience no significant long-term neural effects in these areas of cognition.”
Again, these findings are surprising, as typical understandings regarding cannabis and brain function have long been associated with cognitive decline. But this may be due to how cannabis consumption has been studied in the past. “Prior studies have found that cannabis use, especially in adolescents, is associated with impairments in cognitive processes beyond acute intoxication. Such studies have largely been cross-sectional, have generally not focused on adults using cannabis for medical purposes, and have focused primarily on heavy cannabis use,” the study said.
While the study primarily focused on adults who consume cannabis moderately to treat medical symptoms, the results still offer a novel glimpse into how cannabis impacts crucial brain functions, and challenge preconceived notions about the drug.
