If you celebrate 420, hit the jazz cigarette, toke up, chat with Buddha, blaze, hit the funny home-grown, smoke the devil's cabbage... you may have a teeny-tiny brain.
That's not being rude. That's science.
Someone who smokes marijuana regularly has less gray matter in the orbital frontal cortex than a non-smoker, according to Los Angeles Times: Science Now. The frontal cortex is significant in the "brain's reward, motivation, decision-making and addictive behaviors network."
Regular pot smokers have a better connected frontal cortex via the brain's "white matter" (the highway connecting hemispheres). Researchers suppose that the quick connections are the brain's compensation response to marijuana exposure early in life, according to the L.A. Times.
O.K., so all of the above information applies if you are a rodent, but the researchers who published their findings in the PNAS on Nov. 10 aren't sure how it applies to humans who smoke pot.
In 2012, a University of Texas study identified that subjects with a smaller orbital frontal cortex were more likely to start using marijuana by the time they turned 16, according to L.A. Times. That may suggest that a smaller region begets substance abuse and not the other way around.
The researchers in 2012 also discovered incidentally that the IQ of the weed smokers was "significantly lower" than the group of non-smokers. Again, an indirect linked to marijuana use.
The question is: what came first? The chicken with the munchies or the edibles egg?
