Adults who regularly consume medical cannabis products do not experience any significant adverse changes in either brain morphology or cognitive performance, according to longitudinal data.
Researchers collected structural and functional brain imaging (fMRI) data from a cohort of newly authorised medical cannabis patients at baseline and one-year later. Similar data was also collected for healthy controls (non-cannabis consumers).
Investigators “did not observe functional differences between baseline and brain activation at one-year during working memory, reward processing, or inhibitory control tasks” nor did they identify “an association between changes in cannabis use frequency and brain activation”.
Other studies have determined that medical cannabis patients “exhibit enhanced rather than impaired executive function over time” likely as a result of clinical improvements in their conditions.
The study’s authors concluded: “Our results suggest that adults who use cannabis, generally with light to moderate use patterns, for symptoms of pain, anxiety, depression, or poor sleep, experience few significant long-term neural associations in these areas of cognition”.
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22 September, 2024