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Increasing numbers of psychiatric patients regularly use marijuana, thanks to the growing social and legal acceptance of both medical and recreational use. Despite the known cognitive drawbacks of marijuana use, some people who report symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) use marijuana regularly because they believe it mitigates their ADHD symptoms.
Researchers have now studied the changes in brain glucose metabolism after methylphenidate challenge (0.5 mg/kg intravenously) in 24 participants meeting DSM-IV criteria for cannabis abuse (or dependence) and 24 healthy controls; both groups had equal numbers of men and women. At baseline, frontal-lobe glucose metabolism was significantly lower in cannabis abusers than in co…