Important Science News: Gaming Enhances Marijuana’s Performance

Alzheimer’s-Fighting Superfriends, ASSEMBLE!

The headline may be misleading, we’ll admit, but there was an interesting study conducted by the Groningen Mental Enhancement Department in the Netherlands.  They studied patients with Alzheimer’s Disease for one year to see how playing video games while both sober and under the influence of marijuana would effect their memory retention.  I’m giving everyone permission to feed me all the marijuana they have if I ever get Alzheimer’s.  It’s for science.  I’m updating my living will after I finish this sentence. *extra loud typing noises* And done.

Considering all the warnings about weed damaging short-term memory, you’d think the marijuana would lower the patients’ memory retention, but did it work that way with Alzheimer’s patients?

All the test subjects played increasingly challenging games each day, but half the group was also administered [marijuana]. Would you believe that the marijuana test group scored 43 percent better memory retention than the control group?  “It was a far greater benefit to the marijuana-administered group than we could have imagined,” said test organizer Ewoud Joost. [Freeculturemag via Kotaku]

Well, that’s awesome.  But now we need to know scientifically if the opposite is true: does marijuana enhance gaming performance?  Sure, we have plenty of anecdotes, but what of the clinical studies?  And can we volunteer?  THIS IS IMPORTANT.

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