Identification of THC impairment using functional brain imaging

Driving while under the influence of THC, known as drugged driving, is becoming more of an issue as more states legalize cannabis for both medical and recreational use around the country. THC is known to impair cognitive and psychomotor performance and thus impair driving. Jodi Gilman is a neuroscientist and an associate professor of psychiatry at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and she’s one of the authors of a new study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. She says that impairment and exposure are easier to correlate with alcohol. But tolerance to THC is so vastly different among different people, and the amounts that people use whether for pain or to get high are also so vastly different, that people can have detectible amounts of THC in their system, but it does not necessarily correlate with whether or not that person is too impaired to drive. Listen in to hear what she and her team did to try to detect brain impairment under the influence of THC. Read the full article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-021-01259-0