cannabisnews.com: Pot Impairs Learning in Adolescent Rats: Study










  Pot Impairs Learning in Adolescent Rats: Study

Posted by CN Staff on June 06, 2006 at 15:48:59 PT
For Immediate Release 
Source: Health Central  

USA -- The main active ingredient in marijuana leads to short-term impairment of learning in adolescent rats, but doesn't seem to affect adults similarly, Duke University Medical Center researchers report.Their study compared the effects of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on the memory ability of adolescent and adult rats to see if the animals, and perhaps humans, are more sensitive to THC at certain stages.
Researchers found that chronic exposure to THC during adolescence may not lead to long-term damage persisting into adulthood, but said the finding should be interpreted cautiously, since other studies have suggested the damage may be longer-lasting. The study tested the effects of THC exposure on memory and learning by dosing rats with varying amounts, training them to navigate a "water maze," and then measuring how well the rats remembered how to get to a stationary platform in the water. After the THC had cleared the rats' systems and the adolescents had reached full maturity, the researchers tested how well they performed in the water maze. The chronic exposure appeared to have no effect on the rats' later learning abilities, the study found. The findings appear in the March 2006 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, which is expected to be published June 8. "There are plenty of good reasons for adolescents to not smoke pot," said H. Scott Swartzwelder, a professor of psychiatry at Duke and the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the senior author on the study. "The teen years require a lot of learning and preparation for adulthood." Source: Health Central (US Web)Published: June 6, 2006Copyright: 2006 ScoutNews LLC.Website: http://www.healthcentral.com/Contact:  comments healthcentral.comCannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml

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Comment #28 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 11:40:18 PT
Hope
Aggression can be channeled. That's where sports can help. It takes full time parenting to deal with an aggressive child. 
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Comment #27 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 11:27:08 PT
Comment 24
The best "cure" for these kids is a parent that loves them, cares about them, and raises them and teaches them the "way" they should go. They need parents who actually have the time to raise them.Too many people are too busy to attend to tending to and raising their children. You HAVE to give them positive, CONSTANT attention and a lot of it.The aggressive child needs his agression checked constantly by a loving guide into adulthood. If it's done right, he will LEARN how to check his own aggressive tendencies.If all of your waking time is spent trying to earn money to feed a child...there is no time for proper "raising" left.
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Comment #26 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 11:24:08 PT
Hope
I don't know. I haven't written him recently but I know I weighed my words very carefully. He is way over 2,000 miles from his wife and family. It makes it so hard. 
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Comment #25 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 11:20:59 PT
My fear
is that Jerry's association with us could be detrimental to his being freed sooner.I hope not.
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Comment #24 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 11:19:52 PT
Aggressive Teens More likely To Try Tobacco, Pot
June 07, 2006 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among young adolescents, aggression is linked to a likelihood of experimenting with cigarettes or marijuana for the first time, while impulsivity confers a greater risk of trying alcohol, a new study shows.However, the researchers found no association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and substance-use initiation.Dr. Monique Ernst of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland and her colleagues sought to determine whether a psychiatric diagnosis like ADHD or behavioral measures such as level of aggression or impulsivity might influence the risk that a child would try pot, cigarettes or alcohol for the first time. They followed 78 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls, 50 of whom had been diagnosed with ADHD.
 Complete Article: : http://tinyurl.com/phsbd
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Comment #23 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 11:19:42 PT
Free Jerry now!
Amen and amen!
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Comment #22 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 10:18:58 PT
BGreen
If we can find someone who cares about our issues and lives near the prison that Jerry is in I wish they would consider visiting him. 
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Comment #21 posted by BGreen on June 07, 2006 at 09:53:20 PT
The March 2006 issue published in June 2006?
They're three months behind in publishing their work trying to vilify cannabis, so it seems like studying stupid things is an anti-motivational substance.No matter what they find about cannabis that they consider "bad," I can give you several common and accepted practices that are much worse and completely legal.FREE JERRY, NOW!!!!!The Reverend Bud Green
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Comment #20 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 09:34:58 PT
BGreen 
Exercise, good healthy food and adequate rest are important. 
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Comment #19 posted by BGreen on June 07, 2006 at 09:31:04 PT
2 other proven detriments to adolescent learning
that affects millions are not eating a quality breakfast and not getting a good night's sleep.OK boys, let's start locking up some parents here, because these are easily preventable and potentially life-threatening.The Reverend Bud Green
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Comment #18 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 09:21:47 PT
Hope
The best thing for a young person to do is work hard at play or helping around the house and burn off excess energy. Keep kids busy. Young people are fed well, mostly get good care and have comforts that most generations didn't enjoy. Some young people might need drugs but most just need an outlet for their pent up energy.
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Comment #17 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 09:05:46 PT
Out on a conspirital limb...
Of course, maybe it's not that way. Maybe sheer ignorance led us to this point. But when you look at a monster and it looks like a killer....it probably is."Walks like a duck...sounds like a duck...it might be a duck."
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Comment #16 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 08:58:25 PT
And
the pharmeceutical industry profits from it and shares the wealth of the mass poisoning with their happy shareholders.Whoever thought it was a good idea to have the country run like a business by businessmen...was totally stark raving mad.
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Comment #15 posted by Hope on June 07, 2006 at 08:55:32 PT
Forcing powerful anti-psychotics on children
and denying the population the use of a healthful non poisonous herb.It's scary. I'm scared for our children's future in this miserable crazy place this country has become. I fear they are trying to find the children that don't fit their "venue" and poison them so that they will die young of pharmaceutically induced heart failure.God help us, please!
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Comment #14 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 08:32:04 PT
Young Minds
Most young people bounce around a lot with their ideas and what they want to do. Adults mostly know what they want to do so Cannabis isn't going to cause confusion or memory problems with them I think. Cannabis can help a person forget what they should forget though.
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Comment #13 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 08:26:35 PT
mai_bong_city 
You are very welcome.
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Comment #12 posted by mai_bong_city on June 07, 2006 at 08:21:44 PT
thank you FoM
merci por le url petite!
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Comment #11 posted by dongenero on June 07, 2006 at 08:11:12 PT
rats
Thanks for the tinyurl link by the way FoM.So, rats.............this article says rats don't learn as well when they are stoned but it causes no long term impairment and doesn't affect adults in the same way.I would suggest adolescents (rats or human) not use cannabis, certainly I would not recommend going to class and trying to learn stoned.....okay, there's some research stating the obvious.My real concern is the new approach this study will give the prohibitionists............
"What kind of message would legalization send to the adolescent rats?" ...or....."Think of the adolescent rats"...."I think this send the wrong message to adolescent rats"You see the prohibitionists can now invoke not only the "childrun" but also "the rats". This will be a tough one for cannabis reform to overcome!
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on June 07, 2006 at 07:29:02 PT
mai_bong_city 
I was able to fix the long url. Long urls throw the comment section off. This is what I do. I bookmark this web site and put a long url in it and it then takes the place of the long url. Here it is and it is a very helpful web site. http://tinyurl.com/create.php
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Comment #9 posted by mai_bong_city on June 07, 2006 at 07:17:20 PT

this makes me want to scream
my browser is a bitch so i can't get the reuter's link, i can only get this yahoo one...i had seen this a few months ago too, that the 'highest' new group of anti-psychotic users was elementary schoolchildren....what are they doing?????? i have been on a few of these drugs and for the life of me - for the life of those children, argghh.....madness, madness.
they have no idea what effect this has - a lifetime of anti-psychotics, prescribed off-label.....it ain't right. i just ain't. it makes me very sad.
the thing about cannabis and memory, it's been said the israeli army was treating soldiers with ptsd with it because it somehow was a selective memory blocker...the bad and useless fly off, and only the good and helpful ones remain at the front. 
it's just - what planet is this, that will chemicalize our toddlers for life and won't allow a plant that heals so many sick :( http://tinyurl.com/zhxgb
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Comment #8 posted by Christen-Mitchell on June 07, 2006 at 06:49:51 PT:

No more smoke, you little rats!
It's a sad day in little rat kingdom.Actually it's somwhat of a positive study. Empirically it demonstrates no harmful effects for adult use. How many guvmint recognized studies are favorable in any way whatsoever. Few would openly approve use by youth, so this is a backdoor positive.The Iran incentive package seems to be possible. It has been hinted that along with reactor help, nuclear fuel and airplane parts that one of the Bush twins are part of the deal.Also it is little known, but the same crack Boulder Detectives from the Ramsey case have obviously been helping with the Natalee Holloway disapearance.
Hemptopia - Our Greener Future
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Comment #7 posted by potpal on June 07, 2006 at 04:07:26 PT

Jeez...
Now give them another million dollars to study what foods the rats like to munch on afterwards. What a bunch of crap. Rather selective with their cannabis news, eh? Believe some really remarkable discoveries have recently been made re: cannabis. Where they be?
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Comment #6 posted by whig on June 06, 2006 at 21:07:05 PT

Cannabis and memory
I do think cannabis has important effects on the memory. It makes you remember things that you had forgotten, it lets you know that the important things are still there.
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Comment #5 posted by whig on June 06, 2006 at 21:02:52 PT

Max
"Why don't they just do human tests if they're curious? They already know there would be no risk to the humans' health."So well said, Max. The question of the acute effects of cannabis cannot be adequately studied while cannabis remains illegal. There are some very interesting things that could be learned if we could just openly enroll volunteers and say, we're going to try to find out how your memory is working and you'll get some free pot and a few bucks for your time.
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Comment #4 posted by Max Flowers on June 06, 2006 at 19:58:28 PT

This study is excellent
It lets us stop all that worrying we do about how well rats will remember how to get to their water dish after they recover from being stoned. Cause hey, that's a big issue, dontcha know. This is an old game they're playing. We've all known for decades that animal studies with drugs can't tell us much of anything that can trasnfer to human physiology. Acute toxicity, yes, and things like that, but nothing subtle (like memory tests for pete's sake!). Rats are rats and humans are human. Why don't they just do human tests if they're curious? They already know there would be no risk to the humans' health. Ah yes, but those tests would probably return lots of bad news for prohibitionists (but good news for humanity), so they don't get approved.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on June 06, 2006 at 17:39:24 PT

News Article from News-Medical.Net 
PET Imaging of Cerebral Cannabinoid CB1 Receptors with [11C]JHU75528 ***Medical Research News Published: Tuesday, 6-Jun-2006 
  
 
 
 A team of Johns Hopkins researchers developed a new radiotracer - a radioactive substance that can be traced in the body - to visualize and quantify the brain's cannabinoid receptors by positron emission tomography (PET), opening a door to the development of new medications to treat drug dependence, obesity, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and Tourette syndrome. Discovery of the [11C]JHU75528 radioligand, a radioactive biochemical substance that is used to study the receptor systems of the brain, "opens an avenue for noninvasive study of central cannabinoid (CB1) receptors in the human and animal brain," explained Andrew Horti, assistant professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Md. He explained that there is evidence that CB1 receptors play an essential role in many disorders including schizophrenia, depression and motor function disorders. "Quantitative imaging of the central CB1 using PET could provide a great opportunity for the development of cannabinergic medications and for studying the role of CB1 in these disorders," added the co-author of "PET Imaging of Cerebral Cannabinoid CB1 Receptors with [11C]JHU75528." Cannabinoid receptors are proteins on the surface of brain cells; they are most dense in brain regions involved with thinking and memory, attention and control of movement. The effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, are due to its binding to specific cannabinoid receptors located on the surface of brain cells. "Blocking CB1 receptors presents the possibility of developing new, emerging medications for treatment of obesity and drug dependence including alcoholism, tobacco and marijuana smoking," said Horti. The usefulness of in vivo (in the body) radioligands for studying cerebral receptors by PET depends on the image quality, and a good PET radiotracer must display a high level of specific receptor binding and low non-specific binding (binding with other proteins, cell membranes, etc.), said Horti. "If the non-specific binding is too high and specific binding is too low, the PET images become too 'noisy' for quantitative measurements," he noted. "We developed a PET radiotracer with a unique combination of good CB1 binding affinity and relatively low non-specific binding in mice and baboon brains," he added. "Previously developed PET radioligands for imaging of CB1 receptors were not suitable for quantitative imaging due to the high level of image 'noise,'" he added. "Even though PET methodology was developed 30 years ago, its application for studying cerebral receptors is limited due to the lack of suitable radioligands," said Horti. "Development of [11C]JHU75528 will allow noninvasive research of CB1 receptor," he added, indicating that Johns Hopkins researchers need to complete various safety studies and obtain Food and Drug Administration approval before [11C]JHU75528 can be used for PET imaging in people. "This discovery would not have been possible without involvement of many highly qualified researchers, including the teams of Robert Dannals and Dean Wong and support of Richard Wahl, director of the nuclear medicine department," said Horti.2006 News-Medical.Net  http://www.snm.org
 
 
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=18312
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Comment #2 posted by MikeEEEEE on June 06, 2006 at 16:49:52 PT

Stoned Rats
The minds of teenagers are wired differently than adults. They didn't need to waste money on a study.Alcohol has worst affects on everybody, especially on the prohibitionist rats.
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Comment #1 posted by Sam Adams on June 06, 2006 at 16:09:54 PT

pathetic
I wonder how it feels to know that you're focusing your life's energy and decades of studying & training for the purpose of playing with stoned rats in a water maze?We have have reached the final stages of the Empire. This is surely a sign that the end is near. Very Roman-esque. Laughing and getting rats high while we overpopulate & slowly destroy the earth. As our population eats itself to death. Like the Romans laying around the Vomitorium while the Goths sharpened their blades out in the wilderness.The barbarians are at the gate!
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