[Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's media advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up for NORML's free e-zine here.]

The consumption of cannabis, even long-term, has a “minimal” impact on brain function, according to a systematic literature review just published online by the journal Psychological Medicine.

An international team of investigators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Australia, and Switzerland conducted a systematic review of the effects of cannabis on brain structure and function.

Authors wrote, “We reviewed literature reporting neuroimaging studies of chronic or acute cannabis use published up until January 2009. … Sixty-six studies were identified, of which 41 met the inclusion criteria. Thirty-three were functional (SPECT/PET/fMRI) and eight structural (volumetric/DTI) imaging studies. … Only three of the structural imaging studies found differences between users and controls.”

Investigators concluded, “Minimal evidence of major effects of cannabis on brain structure has been reported,” noting that marijuana users and controls perform similarly on cognitive tasks.

According to a 2001 study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, long-term cannabis smokers who abstained from pot for one week “showed virtually no significant differences from control subjects (those who had smoked marijuana less than 50 times in their lives) on a battery of 10 neuropsychological tests.” Investigators added, “Former heavy users, who had consumed little or no cannabis in the three months before testing, [also] showed no significant differences from control subjects on any of these tests on any of the testing days.”