New study shows marijuana users have low blood flow to the brain

As the U.S. races to legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational use, a new, large scale brain imaging study gives reason for caution. Published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a sophisticated imaging study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns, demonstrated abnormally low blood flow in virtually every area of the brain studies in nearly 1,000 marijuana compared to healthy controls, including areas known to be affected by Alzheimer's pathology such as the hippocampus.

Hippocampus, the brain's key memory and learning center, has the lowest blood flow in marijuana users suggesting higher vulnerability to Alzheimer's. As the U.S. races to legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational use, a new, large scale brain imaging study gives reason for caution. Published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a sophisticated imaging study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns, demonstrated abnormally low blood flow in virtually every area of the brain studies in nearly 1,000 marijuana compared to healthy controls, including areas known to be affected by Alzheimer's pathology such as the hippocampus.

All datawere obtained for analysis from a large multisite database, involving 26,268 patients who came for evaluation of complex, treatment resistant issues to one of nine outpatient neuropsychiatric clinics across the United States (Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Fairfield, and Brisbane, CA, Tacoma and Bellevue, WA, Reston, VA, Atlanta, GA and New York, NY) between 1995-2015. Of these, 982 current or former marijuana users had brain SPECT at rest and during a mental concentration task compared to almost 100 healhty controls. Predictive analytics with discriminant analysis was done to determine if brain SPECT regions can distinguish marijuana user brains from controls brain. Low blood flow in the hippocampus in marijuana users reliably distinguished marijuana users from controls. The right hippocampus during a concentration task was the single most predictive region in distinguishing marijuana users from their normal counterparts. Marijuana use is thought to interfere with memory formation by inhibiting activity in this part of the brain.

According to one of the co-authors on the study Elisabeth Jorandby, M.D., "As a physician who routinely sees marijuana users, what struck me was not only the global reduction in blood flow in the marijuana users brains , but that the hippocampus was the most affected region due to its role in memory and Alzheimer's disease. Our research has proven that marijuana users have lower cerebral blood flow than non-users. Second, the most predictive region separating these two groups is low blood flow in the hippocampus on concentration brain SPECT imaging. This work suggests that marijuana use has damaging influences in the brain – particularly regions important in memory and learning and known to be affected by Alzheimer's."

Dr. George Perry, editor in chief of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease said, "Open use of marijuana, through legalization, will reveal the wide range of marijuana's benefits and threats to human health. This study indicates troubling effects on the hippocampus that may be the harbingers of brain damage."

According to Daniel Amen, M.D., Founder of Amen Clinics, "Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order."

 










New study shows marijuana users have low blood flow to the brain

Starting age of marijuana use may have long-term effects on brain development

Contrasting Brain Scans of Marijuana Usage.
Divergent patterns in overlapping areas of anterior prefrontal cortex. Credit: Center for BrainHealth

The age at which an adolescent begins using marijuana may affect typical brain development, according to researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas. In a paper recently published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists describe how marijuana use, and the age at which use is initiated, may adversely alter brain structures that underlie higher order thinking.

Findings show study participants who began using marijuana at the age of 16 or younger demonstrated brain variations that indicate arrested brain development in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for judgment, reasoning and complex thinking. Individuals who started using marijuana after age 16 showed the opposite effect and demonstrated signs of accelerated brain aging.

"Science has shown us that changes in the brain occurring during adolescence are complex. Our findings suggest that the timing of cannabis use can result in very disparate patterns of effects," explained Francesca Filbey, Ph.D., principal investigator and Bert Moore Chair of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the Center for BrainHealth. "Not only did age of use impact the brain changes but the amount of cannabis used also influenced the extent of altered brain maturation."

The research team analyzed MRI scans of 42 heavy marijuana users; twenty participants were categorized as early onset users with a mean age of 13.18 and 22 were labeled as late onset users with a mean age of 16.9. According to self-reports, all participants, ages 21-50, began using marijuana during adolescence and continued throughout adulthood, using cannabis at least one time per week.

According to Filbey, in typical adolescent brain development, the brain prunes neurons, which results in reduced cortical thickness and greater gray and white matter contrast. Typical pruning also leads to increased gyrification, which is the addition of wrinkles or folds on the brain's surface. However, in this study, MRI results reveal that the more marijuana early onset users consumed, the greater their cortical thickness, the less gray and white matter contrast, and the less intricate the gyrification, as compared to late onset users. These three indexes indicate that when participants began using marijuana before age 16, the extent of brain alteration was directly proportionate to the number of weekly marijuana use in years and grams consumed. Contrastingly, those who began using marijuana after age 16 showed brain change that would normally manifest later in life: thinner cortical thickness, stronger gray and white matter contrast.

 





Starting age of marijuana use may have long-term effects on brain development

Synthetic cannabinoids versus natural marijuana—a comparison of expectations

An article entitled "Comparison of Outcome Expectancies for Synthetic Cannabinoids and Botanical Marijuana," from The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, studied the expected outcomes of both synthetic and natural marijuana.

186 adults who had previously used both synthetic and natural marijuana, as well as 181 who had previously used only botanical marijuana, were surveyed about their expected outcomes of using either type of cannabinoid. The results showed that the expected negative effects were significantly higher for synthetic marijuana than for natural marijuana across both categories of use history.

Despite the more commonly expected negative effects of synthetic cannabinoids, the most cited reasons for using these compounds were wider availability, avoiding a positive drug test, curiosity, perceived legality, and cost.

Authors concluded, "Given growing public acceptance of recreational and medical marijuana, coupled with negative perceptions and increasing regulation of synthetic cannabinoid compounds, botanical marijuana is likely to remain more available and more popular than synthetic cannabinoids.

Journal Article: Comparison of outcome expectancies for synthetic cannabinoids and botanical marijuan

Synthetic cannabinoids versus natural marijuana—a comparison of expectations

Study: Long-term marijuana use changes brain's reward circuit

The recent legalization of marijuana use in California and many other states inspired Health Train Express to publish a series of articles on the use of Marijuana.

Chronic marijuana use disrupts the brain's natural reward processes, according to researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas.

 

In many ways this legalization follows the aftermath of 'prohibition' of alcohol many decades ago. History repeats itself.  The course now set before us very much mirrors that of  alcohol.

Caveat emptor !  Beware.  Most of the same caveats apply to marijuana as they do to alcohol. Legalizing marijuana use is in no way any safer than using alcohol.  Addiction and abuse are major dangers.  Government now will tax sales in lieu of the cost of enforcment and the many lives that are imprisoned for minor infractions using marijuana in the past.

Scientific peer reviewed articles have been published in the past decade

This is the first of a number of article on legalization ofMarijuana.

Dependence alters the brain's response to pot paraphernalia

New research from The University of Texas at Dallas demonstrates that drug paraphernalia triggers the reward areas of the brain differently in dependent and non-dependent marijuana users.
 

The study, published July 1 in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, demonstrated that different areas of the brain activated when dependent and non-dependent users were exposed to drug-related cues.

The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. According to a 2013 survey from the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of Americans ages 18 and older have tried marijuana. The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that 9 percent of daily users will become dependent on marijuana.

"We know that people have a hard time staying abstinent because seeing cues for the drug use triggers this intense desire to seek out the drugs," said Dr. Francesca Filbey, lead author of the study and professor at the Center for BrainHealth in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. "That's a clinically validated phenomenon and behavioral studies have also shown this to be the case. What we didn't know was what was driving those effects in the brain."

To find this effect, Filbey and colleagues conducted brain-imaging scans, called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), on 71 participants who regularly used marijuana. Just more than half of those were classified as dependent users. While being scanned, the participants were given either a used marijuana pipe or a pencil of approximately the same size that they could see and feel.Marijuana has been shown to have some therapeutic effects

Study: Long-term marijuana use changes brain's reward circuit

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Nevada woman dies of superbug resistant to all available US antibiotics

Is this an example of another growing trend how mother nature controls the destiny of earth.

Biology teaches us how biological systems control their own growth based upon available resources and disposal of waste products.

Are we synchronized with earth's biome ?  Are some politicians ignorant or uninformed about how basic laws of nature work ?  Are business interests and corporations more than insensitive about climate change, pollution and the dangers of extracting earth's minerals and carbon sources for energy ?

This "superbug" is another example of signs that humanity may self-extinguish in the next 100 years, as poverty increases in the developed nations with growing disparities between wealth and poor even in highly developed nations.

The superbugs are winning the battle against us

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Witness major refugee and forced emigration events increasing during the last ten years. Populations are risking certain death to escape inhospitable political regimes, famine.

Climate change due to known and unknown cycles plus increased waste with carbon cycle disruption. Ocean rise, coupled with intensifying meteorologic events, tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones, disrupted weather cycles and extreme temperature variations.

Past events evidenced in archeological  excavations show mass extinctions and migrations for unknown reasons and infectious epidemics. (Vikings, Aztec Indians, and more)

Outbreaks of new diseases, Zika, Ebola,









Nevada woman dies of superbug resistant to all available US antibiotics

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