Pot Doesn't Dull Senses

Long-term marijuana use doesn't seem to damage the brain and central nervous system, a new study says.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine analyzed the results of studies on long-term, recreational marijuana users. The analysis of those studies failed to reveal a substantial, systematic effect on the neurocognitive functioning of those marijuana users.

The only negative side effect identified by the researchers was a minimal malfunction in the domains of learning and forgetting.

The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

The findings may be especially relevant as several states consider making marijuana available as a medicinal drug and there are questions about the potential toxicity of long-term marijuana use.

For their analysis, the researchers examined 15 previous studies on the residual effects of marijuana on neurocognitive performance of adults. The studies included 704 long-term marijuana users and 484 non-users.

In those studies, neurocognitive performance measurements included simple reaction time, attention, verbal/language, abstraction/executive functioning, perceptual/motor skills, learning and forgetting.

"Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects. The only exception was a very small effect in learning new information," senior author Dr. Igor Grant says in a statement.

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