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By Buck Wolf, About.com Guide to Weird News

Study: Marijuana Shrinks Parts of Brain

Tuesday June 3, 2008
marijuana smoker

Steve Martin's old standup routine "Let's Get Small" was not only a hilarious bit on marijuana users, it just might have been prophetic.

A study of brain scans show that heavy pot smoking can shrink parts of the brain, according to researchers in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Men who smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for 20 years were shown to have a diminished hippocampus and amygdala.

The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion -- and if your stoner friends forget this little tidbit, at least now you know why.

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  • Photo © Getty Images

    Comments

    January 19, 2009 at 6:17 pm
    (1) shady8x says:

    Eating vegetables also shrinks the brain…and last I checked marijuana is a plant/vegetable rather than a drug…

    P.S. There is more evidence that it cures cancer than evidence that it shrinks brains…

    That said, only idiots inhale smoke on purpose…

    March 25, 2009 at 3:49 am
    (2) Andreas says:

    Even though it shrinks the amygdala and hippocampus, they couldn’t find any diminished mental ability in their participants.

    They scored about the same average as the test-group in cognitive workings.

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