Samuel Rozenfeld
Professor Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson
HON 223
27 September, 2021
The article that I looked at this week is called “Cannabis may alter a teen’s developing brain.” This article talks about the research found that cannabis use can alter teenage brains for a multitude of different reasons. Some of what it talks about coincides with the effect that cannabis has on the prefrontal cortex of the brain, and how it accelerates the thinning of this part of the brain. However, it is clear to state that this does not make the brain more mature more quickly, but instead rushes the natural development that the brain goes through and in turn causes less efficient and rushed development that could have consequences in the future. When looking at the article and the journals that it sourced, it is clear to see that it did a lot of summarizing of the information previously found in other articles. It also did a good job of clearly leading to the articles that it referenced, as I was able to access all of them. One thing that I did find interesting however, was that even though most of the article was a summarization of various different research that agreed with each other, the article did include pictures and graphics that were unique. When I went through all the sources cited in the article, I was not able to find the pictures that it sourced, even though the pictures were done by authors of the cited sources. I presume that those graphics could be found in the cited sources of those academic journals, but I was not able to dig through the multitudes of various sources cited there. The article that I found also did a very good job of being accurate to the journals it sourced, whoever I do think that at times it did stay a little vague in order to not misrepresent what the original journal had said. The journal that I specifically looked at was titled “Association of Cannabis Use During Adolescence With Neurodevelopment,” and it was heavily cited in the article that I found. Overall, I think that Silke Schmidt, the author of “Cannabis may alter a teen’s developing brain,” did a really good job of compacting and presenting research to the reader without skewing or misrepresenting the information to grab impressions.
Works Cited:
Schmidt, Silke. “Cannabis May Alter a Teen’s Developing Brain.” Science News for Students, 9 Sept. 2021, https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/cannabis-may-alter-a-teens-developing-brain.
M.D. Albaugh et al. Association of cannabis use during adolescence with neurodevelopment. JAMA Psychiatry. e211258, published online June 16, 2021. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1258.
