Stoners can empathize better than those who don’t use the drug, a new study shows.
People who enjoy a joint regularly are better at recognizing the feelings of others and can better put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
Researchers from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico asked 81 cannabis users and 51 people who did not use the psychoactive drug to complete a 33-item questionnaire measuring empathy skills.
It looked at perspective taking – the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes – and emotional understanding, that and understanding the emotions of others.
The scientists also analyzed whether or not volunteers could tune in to positive or negative feelings, and behave accordingly.
Those who regularly smoked cannabis showed increased activity in brain areas linked to reading the emotions of others, compared to a group of non-users, a new Mexican study found
About half the week, smokers and two-thirds of non-users then underwent brain scans to look for differences in activity in areas related to perceiving emotions in others.
Results published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research showed that cannabis users scored higher on the empathy test and had greater connectivity in areas involved in emotions, such as the anterior cingulate near the front of the brain.
The findings come amid a number of recent reports of the drug’s negative health effects, including an increased risk of heart attacks and schizophrenia.
The researchers do not suggest why this effect is observed.
However, other experts have previously suggested that long-term use of cannabis can cause permanent, positive changes in personality due to its impact on certain areas of the brain.
But the Mexican team from the current study makes a caveat: “We cannot ignore that such differences were already present before users started using cannabis.”
Importantly, the findings may be different in the US, as the potency of marijuana is typically higher than in Mexico, where the study was conducted.
In the study, the smoked cannabis contained only two to ten percent of the psychoactive substance THC. In some US states, the THC content in the average joint is between 10 and 17 percent.
“While further research is needed, these results open an exciting new window for exploring the potential effects of cannabis in supporting treatments for conditions involving deficits in social interactions, such as sociopathy, social anxiety, and avoidant personality disorder, among others.” , says co. -author Víctor Olalde-Mathieu, PhD, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.