People often think that smoking cannabis makes them more creative. However,research by Leiden psychologists Lorenza Colzato and Mikael Kowal shows that the opposite is true.
They published their findings on 7 October inPsychopharmacology.
Strong cannabis doesn’t work
The findings show that cannabis with a high concentration of the psychoactive ingredient THC does not improve creativity. Smokers who ingested a low dose of THC, or none at all (they were given a placebo), performed best in the thinking tasks that the test candidates had to carry out. A high dose of THC was actually shown to have a negative effect on the ability to quickly come up with as many solutions as possible to a given problem.
Increased creativity is an illusion
The research findings contradict the claims of people who say that their thinking changes and becomes more original after smoking a joint. There’s no sign of any increased creativity in their actual performance, according to Colzato. ‘The improved creativity that they believe they experience is an illusion.’
Too much cannabis is counterproductive
Colzato said, ‘If you want to overcome writer’s block or any other creative gap, lighting up a joint isn’t the best solution. Smoking several joints one after the other can even be counterproductive to creative thinking.’
The research method
Colzato and her PhD candidate Kowal were the first researchers to study the effects of cannabis use on creative thinking. For ethical reasons, only cannabis users were selected for this study. The test candidates were divided into three groups of 18. One group was given cannabis with a high THC content (22 mg), the second group was given a low dose (5.5 mg) and the third group was given a placebo. The high dose was equivalent to three joints and the low dose was equal to a single joint. Obviously, none of the test candidates knew what they were being given; the cannabis was administered via a vaporiser. The test candidates then had to carry out cognitive tasks that were testing for two types of creative thinking:
- Divergent thinking: generating rapid solutions for a given problem, such as: “Think of as many uses as you can for a pen?”
- Convergent thinking: Finding the only right answer to a question, such as: “What is the link between the words ‘time’, ‘hair’ and ‘stretching’.
Sugar linked to memory problems in adolescent rats
Sugar consumption affected memory and was linked to brain inflammation in juvenile rats, researchers report. “The brain is especially vulnerable to dietary influences during critical periods of development, like adolescence,” remarked a corresponding author of the study. “Consuming a diet high in added sugars not only can lead to weight gain and metabolic disturbances, but can also negatively impact our neural functioning and cognitive ability.”
Studying rats as model subjects, scientists found that adolescents were at an increased risk of suffering negative health effects from sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.
Adolescent rats that freely consumed large quantities of liquid solutions containing sugar or high-fructose corn syrup in concentrations comparable to popular sugar-sweetened beverages experienced memory problems and brain inflammation, and became pre-diabetic, according to a new study from USC. Neither adult rats fed the sugary drinks nor adolescent rats who did not consume sugar had the same issues.
Source: Sciencedaily.com
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