Deans' stroke musings: Daily Marijuana Use Is NOT Associated with Brain Morphometric Measures in Adolescents or Adults

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Daily Marijuana Use Is NOT Associated with Brain Morphometric Measures in Adolescents or Adults

So ask your doctor to push for marijuana legalization because survivors are going to be the forefront on using it prior to clinical proof.
Don't follow anything I suggest:
My 13 reasons to use it post-stroke.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/4/1505.short?sid=3bbdcdec-8cc9-43c1-818b-b6c2e3930677

Barbara J. Weiland¹,
Rachel E. Thayer¹,
Brendan E. Depue²,
Amithrupa Sabbineni¹,
Angela D. Bryan¹, and
Kent E. Hutchison¹

+Show Affiliations

Author contributions: K.E.H. designed research; K.E.H. performed research; B.J.W., R.E.T., B.E.D., A.S., A.D.B., and K.E.H. analyzed data; B.J.W., R.E.T., A.D.B., and K.E.H. wrote the paper.

The Journal of Neuroscience, 28 January 2015, 35(4): 1505-1512; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2946-14.2015

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that marijuana use is associated with volumetric and shape differences in subcortical structures, including the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, in a dose-dependent fashion. Replication of such results in well controlled studies is essential to clarify the effects of marijuana. To that end, this retrospective study examined brain morphology in a sample of adult daily marijuana users (n = 29) versus nonusers (n = 29) and a sample of adolescent daily users (n = 50) versus nonusers (n = 50). Groups were matched on a critical confounding variable, alcohol use, to a far greater degree than in previously published studies. We acquired high-resolution MRI scans, and investigated group differences in gray matter using voxel-based morphometry, surface-based morphometry, and shape analysis in structures suggested to be associated with marijuana use, as follows: the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus, and cerebellum. No statistically significant differences were found between daily users and nonusers on volume or shape in the regions of interest. Effect sizes suggest that the failure to find differences was not due to a lack of statistical power, but rather was due to the lack of even a modest effect. In sum, the results indicate that, when carefully controlling for alcohol use, gender, age, and other variables, there is no association between marijuana use and standard volumetric or shape measurements of subcortical structures.