Latest Breaking News
Showing Original Post only (View all)Casual marijuana use linked to brain changes [View all]
Source: USA Today
Using marijuana a few times a week is enough to physically alter critical brain structures, according to a new study published Tuesday in The Journal of Neuroscience.
"Just casual use appears to create changes in the brain in areas you don't want to change," said Hans Breiter, a psychiatrist and mathematician at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who led the new study.
<snip>
Gregory Gerdeman, a biologist and neuropharmacologist at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he has no reason to doubt the new study's findings but worries generally about marijuana research funded by federal agencies, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is charged with limiting drug use. (The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health as well as the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Northwestern Medicine's Warren Wright Adolescent Center.)
"If you're getting money from the drug czar's office, that money's not going to continue if you don't end up publishing something that at least supports the general story of the danger of drug abuse," Gerdeman said.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/15/marijuana-brain-changes/7749309/