NEUROSCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHO SHOULD AND SHOULDN'T SMOKE WEED #thatpart

One morning in June, barely 5 months after the first dispensary for recreational cannabis opened in New York state, neuroscientist Yasmin Hurd spoke via Zoom to an audience of educators and specialists who work with or run programs for children. The session’s organizers, alarmed by how many children in their South Bronx community were now getting their hands on cannabis, had sought Hurd’s expertise on the drug’s effects.

Hurd put up a slide of the human brain, its bumps and grooves tinged blue, green, yellow, and red to indicate the distribution of the receptors to which tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, binds. She showed how they exist throughout the brain—in the folds of the cerebral cortex, where much of cognition lies; the cauliflower-shaped cerebellum, the seat of motor coordination; the hippocampus, Grand Central for memory; and the amygdala, a crucial hub for emotional regulation.

The receptors, said Hurd, who heads an addiction research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, are “really critical for so many processes in the brain.” And when a person uses cannabis—in any of its edible, dabbable, smokable forms—the drug overwhelms them and disrupts their ability to calibrate neuronal activity.