d mood.
The study will research the effect marijuana has at different stages on development, comparing teens between the ages of 15 through 18, whose brains are still developing, and young adults ages 21 through 30.
The research will investigate how cannabis affects the capacity for learning, as well as the ability to make judgments and control impulses, which are cognitive processes that are needed for treatment, she said.
The study will involve neurophysiological testing and functional imaging of the brain, to determine how long the effects last, Mason said.
The project will also be able to take advantage of what Montoya said have been tremendous advances in the science of marijuana in recent years, including the presence of receptors in the brain that react to it.
“The thing that troubles a lot of us is that (marijuana) has such an appeal to younger people, and in recent time we have learned that the adolescent brain is so different in many ways that the final adult version,” said Dr. Reese Jones, a psychiatry professor at the University of San Francisco. “There is a lot of reason to think that all these issues may be a bigger deal in younger people.”
Recruitment for the study will be conducted through advertising and a Web site. Mason does not expect difficulty finding participants.
She is currently running a separate, more narrow study on treatment for cannabis addiction. When preparing to recruit participants for it, Mason said she worried she was “throwing a party that no one wanted to attend.”
The response surprised her.
“I've been doing alcohol research for a long time, and I got more people seeking treatment for cannabis than I did for alcohol,” she said.
About one-third of those don't use anything but cannabis, she said. And there were two predominant age groups, college-aged and people in their mid-50s, she said.
Southern California is a great location for the study, because there is confusion about the drug, she said. Medical marijuana, though illegal under federal law, is legal in the state.
“I think, in part, that's because policy has been made based on personal biases, rumor and innuendo, instead of science,” she said.