Emotions Affected by Marijuana Use

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Emotions Affected by Marijuana Use

A study conducted by Colorado State University looks at how marijuana use affects emotions, specifically the ability to process and empathize with other humans. The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The study included 70 participants who all consistently used some form of marijuana, either medical and recreational. Electroencephalogram (EEG) tests were conducted on the study’s participants. EEG tests study how brain cells communicate with each other. While the participants were connected to the EEG tests, they were shown pictures of faces with four different expressions including happy, angry, fearful and neutral.

Compared to the control group, marijuana users had strong responses to the images of negative faces and weak responses to the positive expressions. The participants were also asked to distinguish which emotion was shown in the image. It was found that there were no differences in distinguishing which emotion is which between the smokers and non-smokers.

Overall, the study showed that the brains ability to process emotions is affected by marijuana use.