The New York Times reports Martinos Center research on marijuana use, brain development and behavior

October 30, 2014
 

In an article published on Wednesday, The New York Times checks in with Martinos Center researcher Jodi Gilman about relationships between marijuana use and brain development and behavior. The article,“This Is Your Brain on Drugs,” looks at important findings from a paper published in April as well as more recent, ongoing studies.

The initial study, reported in The Journal of Neuroscience, found that even casual, regular use of marijuana appears to be associated with significant structural changes in key brain structures of young adults, including regions involved with motivation, emotion and reward. Gilman was lead author of the paper. The co-senior authors were Anne Blood and Hans Breiter, both also of the Martinos Center. The Center’s Nikos Makris and Andre van der Kouwe contributed as well.

This was the first study to find abnormalities in recreational users of marijuana, as opposed to heavy, habitual users, typically the focus of such investigations. And while researchers work to replicate the preliminary findings in larger samples, Gilman is taking them further, exploring ways in which they might relate to brain function and behavior.

“We are now looking at the effects of marijuana on a range of behaviors, including cognition, memory, attention, motivation and risk taking, using MRI measures, fMRI tasks and behavioral laboratory testing,” she said. “We would like to understand how these functions are affected by the regular use of marijuana in young adults.” The Times article describes an experiment in which she was testing such behaviors in a college student who described herself as a recreational user of marijuana.

Gilman and colleagues hope to publish these studies within the next year or so. Several are already under review, she said.