Smoking weed said to improve working memoryDecember 9, 2018 - 14:46 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - A new study contains a finding that runs counter to common stereotypes about marijuana and forgetful stoners: smoking cannabis actually seems to improve working memory. Researchers at the University of Florida acknowledged that their study, which involved rats and was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning Memory, was unique. Much previous research has concluded that cannabis impairs cognitive performance. But the same time, many of those studies didn’t involve actually inhaling marijuana smoke like this one did. The team put the 32 rats (split evenly by gender) through a pair of delayed response tasks that involved either finding and pressing a lever a certain amount of times or poking their nose into a feeding trough a certain amount of times—the reward being food pellets, of course. The first few times, the rats were sober; in subsequent experiments, they were exposed to cannabis smoke. For male rats, the marijuana didn’t seem to have any effect at all, but for female rats “exposure to cannabis smoke significantly enhanced choice accuracy,” the researchers wrote. That said, baseline performances (prior to exposure) were lower in females compared to males, which “raises the possibility that the enhancing effects in females were due to their relatively worse baseline performance rather than to sex differences in the effects of cannabis per se.” “The overwhelming majority of research in both animal models and human subjects shows that acute administration of cannabis and cannabinoids induces deficits in tests of cognitive function, including working memory. In contrast, the current experiments show that acute exposure to cannabis smoke enhanced working memory performance in a delayed response task in rats, particularly in females in which baseline levels of task performance were lower than those in males.” Top stories Authorities said a total of 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and 511 were wounded during Azerbaijan’s offensive. In 2023, the Azerbaijani government will increase the country’s defense budget by more than 1.1 billion manats ($650 million). The bill, published on Monday, is designed to "eliminate the shortcomings of an unreasonably broad interpretation of the key concept of "compatriot". The earthquake caused a temporary blackout, damaged many buildings and closed a number of rural roads. Partner news | Czech-Armenian military cooperation discussed in Yerevan A delegation led by the Director General for the Industrial Cooperation Division of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic visited Armenia. U.S. welcomes efforts to define Armenia-Azerbaijan border The United States welcomes efforts to define the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, says Vedant Patel. Biden honors resilience of Armenian people on April 24 U.S. President Joe Biden has issued a statement on the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Ex-Karabakh leader moved to solitary confinement cell in Baku, his son says David Vardanyan is the son of former Karabakh leader Ruben Vardanyan who who is currently imprisoned in Azerbaijan. |