{"id":10600,"date":"2015-02-25T17:46:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T17:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=10600"},"modified":"2016-09-21T10:51:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T10:51:52","slug":"this-is-what-your-brain-looks-like-after-you-smoke-weed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2015\/02\/this-is-what-your-brain-looks-like-after-you-smoke-weed\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is What Your Brain Looks Like After You Smoke Weed"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span>VICE Romania<\/b><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Ana Iorga is a Romanian\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>neuromarketing<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0pioneer, who specialises in market research using\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>EEG sensors<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>biometric measures\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>and\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>implicit-association tests<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Attending an advertising conference in Amsterdam last month, Ana staged an impromptu experiment to measure the effect that weed has on the brain using the EEG helmet she tends to carry around in her bag.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“I noticed how quite a few of the attendees grabbed a joint between breaks, and I kept wondering what goes on in their brains during those moments. Because I don’t possess any mind-reading techniques, I thought about comparing their brain activity before and after smoking,” she told me when she got back.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Two of her colleagues were kind enough to sacrifice themselves to the shrine of science; One evening, after dinner, one of them lit a spliff and the other got to munching on a space cookie.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>The first participant \u2013 EEG trajectory before smoking<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Before consuming the products, we went to the hotel bar and I recorded their brain activity. After 15 minutes, I repeated the measures. I was convinced that I’d see a decrease in brain activity, because they said they felt slower, more absent and more relaxed. I was very surprised by the result.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>The first participant \u2013 EEG trajectory after smoking<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Your brain contains billions of cells called neurons, which communicate with each other through electricity. The simultaneous communication between billions of neurons produces a large quantity of electric brain activity, which can be detected and measured through EEG technology. Because these electric impulses are triggered periodically as waves, they’re called “brain waves”.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

EEG sensors measure the activity of neurons located on the surface of the cerebral cortex, and in the case of the two subjects, they showed a very high frequency and amplitude after smoking \u2013 the cerebral rhythm being visibly changed compared to the initial situation. This translates into a brain activity contrasting heavily with the participants’ mood (in stand-by mode and relaxed mode).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>The second participant \u2013 EEG trajectory before eating the space cookie<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Often, studies claim that THC has the effect of slowing down the cerebral rhythm when it is associated with a state of relaxation, and of speeding up when it is associated with visual hallucinations or tripping. With Ana’s two subjects, “it was clear that the cerebral rhythm was faster after smoking and that wave amplitude was larger \u2013 which doesn’t mean that things function chaotically, but that the brain is in a higher alert state. Maybe the guy was tripping or had some sort of bizarre feelings,” explains Laura Cr\u0103ciun \u2013 a neurologist.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cr\u0103ciun emphasises that in the case of the first subject there is an imbalance standing out between the left hemisphere’s cerebral electricity [which deals with logic, language and math processes] and the right [where creativity, intuition, art and music processes take place] and along the sequence from the wave recording taken before smoking. That means that the imbalance is not exclusively determined by cannabis smoking.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Both subjects had consumed moderate quantities of alcohol at dinner, which didn’t interfere with the process very much. During the experiment, the two weren’t asked to perform any tasks, as their brain activity was measured in stand-by and relaxation mode.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>The second participant \u2013 EEG trajectory after eating the space cookie.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“With the subject who ate a space cookie, the effect was both a slowing down [the basic wave frequency rhythm of both hemispheres went down] and speeding up of the amplitude, which is associated with a state of sleep-like, profound relaxation.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“On the first recording, the cerebral rhythm is visibly faster \u2013 in the right hemisphere, because I can’t see a big difference in the left one \u2013 as well as less symmetrical and steady, but I wouldn’t say the effect is a “disturbance” over the brain waves, but more likely a state of awareness,” Cr\u0103ciun added.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_uk\/<\/a> 15<\/span><\/span>th<\/span><\/span><\/sup> Feb 2015<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on\u00a0VICE Romania Ana Iorga is a Romanian\u00a0neuromarketing\u00a0pioneer, who specialises in market research using\u00a0EEG sensors,\u00a0biometric measures\u00a0and\u00a0implicit-association tests.\u00a0Attending an advertising conference in Amsterdam last month, Ana staged an impromptu experiment to measure the effect that weed has on the brain using the EEG helmet she tends to carry around in her bag. “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,22,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-effects-of-drugs-papers","category-europe-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}