Harvard study: smoking weed improves brain functions

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Harvard study: smoking weed improves brain functions


Harvard Study: Smoking Weed Improves Brain Functions
Cognitive function goes better with pot.
Allan MacDonell
ALLAN MACDONELL
Editorial Director. Author of 'Prisoner of X' and 'Punk Elegies.'
People are forever wandering onto KINDLAND territory and wondering out loud: What makes you people so goddamn smart?

Well, scientific findings recently published in Frontiers in Pharmacology may have cleared up that mystery once and for all. Preliminary investigations by medical researchers from McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Tufts University indicate that pot use improves cognitive performance.

Cognitive performance, no need to tell you, is “our ability to utilize the knowledge acquired by mental processes in our brains.” In other words, perform tasks that require thinking, as in to be so goddamn smart.

The behavioral scientists behind the work summarized in “Splendor in the Grass? A Pilot Study Assessing the Impact of Medical Marijuana on Executive Function” tracked 24 certified medical-marijuana patients over a three-month dosing period. The patients were repeatedly measured for cognitive proficiency through challenges to the intelligence that included the Stroop Color Word Test and Trail Making Test.

Staci Gruber, PhD, director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) program at McLean Hospital—Harvard Medical School’s largest psychiatric affiliate—is the lead “Splendor in the Grass?” researcher. Her initial report is twofold positive. For one thing, weed treatment led to patients

More here: http://www.thekindland.com/wellness/harvard-study-smoking-weed-improves-brain-functions-2330