Mental Health

Good Weed Could Impact Tissue Connect Left and Right of Brain

By Dustin Braden | Update Date: Nov 30, 2015 09:47 PM EST

Smoking strong marijuana may impact the tissue connecting the left and right sides of the human brain, making it more difficult for them communicate.

A new study by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry of King's College London found that people who regularly smoke cannabis with high levels of THC saw changes to the matter connecting both sides of the human brain that were not present in people who smoked weaker cannabis or did not smoke cannabis at all, The Guardian reported.

Weaker cannabis has THC levels ranging from 2 to 4 percent while stronger varieties, of which it is believed there are more than 100, have THC percentages of 10 to 14 percent. The researchers used both magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, and diffusion tensor imaging, otherwise known as DRIs.

The study looked at a narrow sample of 56 patients who had reported their first episode of psychosis and 43 healthy members of the community at large.

The study found a 2 percent greater "mean diffusivity" in tissue connecting both sides of the brain in people who smoked high quality cannabis. The researchers stressed they do not know concretely what exactly this means in terms of impacts on a given marijuana smoker, but did say that it does mean that the connection between both hemispheres of the brain is not as strong as it would be without the use of cannabis.

The researchers also said that it is entirely possible that people who have damaged tissue connecting both lobes of the brain are more likely to smoke marijuana in general, which means that the damage was not caused by marijuana.

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