psychopharmacological use of cannabis

The use of cannabis can lead to an acute toxic psychosis, 'flashbacks', depersonalization, derealization and marked cognitive and psychomotor impairment. Further research is needed to establish whether a functional psychosis can be provoked, aggravated or prolonged by cannabis intake. Perhaps of greatest significance among the physical sequelae is the potential to suppress the immune system, impair reproduction, produce respiratory disease and increase the risk of lung cancer

learning by State-dependent memory State-dependent memory or state-dependent learning is the phenomenon where people remember more information if their physical or mental state is the same at time of encoding and time of recall. State-dependent memory is heavily researched in regards to its employment both in regards to synthetic states of consciousness (such as under the effects of psychoactive drugs) as well as organic states of consciousness such as mood. While state-dependent memory may seem rather similar to context-dependent memory, context-dependent memory involves an individual's external environment and conditions (such as the room used for study and to take the test) while state-dependent memory applies to the individual's internal conditions (such as use of substances or mood).

It has been hypothesized throughout the years that intoxicated people do not remember what they did while they were drunk because they were in a state of euphoria. Whereas in day to day life the average person is not quite as happy. It is not until they become intoxicated again and reach that higher mood that they can begin to piece together what they did a few nights before. State-dependent memory influenced by mood has been the subject of some controversy within the psychological field. Though research seemed to show evidence for the existence of mood-dependence in memory, this came into question later on when researchers suggested the results were actually the result of mood congruent memory, a phenomenon in which an individual recalls more information associated with their condition. For example, a person who is asked to learn a list of words while they have a cold might remember more words associated with their illness such as "tissue" or "congestion" when later asked to recall the words learned. Researchers have since been conducting experiments to unearth the truth about mood-dependent memory, though it remains difficult to completely eliminate unreliability from such studies. Some studies have investigated the existence of mood-dependent memory, especially in individuals with bipolar disorder who generally vacillate over time between mood extremes, specifically depression and mania. In 1977, it was found that individuals with bipolar disorder performed better on a verbal association test when they were in a similar mood state to their state when the verbal associations were learned.[19] A more recent study in 2011 similarly studied a group of individual with bipolar disorder and found evidence for mood-dependent memory on a visual task (recognition of inkblots). It was observed that subjects had better recall for these inkblots when they were in the same mood state they had been in when they first saw these inkblots. However, researchers did not find a similar effect for verbal tasks.[20] Because the two studies do not agree on the effects of mood in regard to verbal recall tasks, further research is needed to clarify the existence of mood-dependent memory on both verbal and visual recall tasks as well as to investigate mood-dependent memory in those suffering from other mood disorders or individuals without mood disorders of any kind. In 1979 a study was conducted on a man named Jonah who suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder. While asked a series of questions of various subject matter, it wasn't until he was asked personal and emotional questions that his alternate personalities seemed to surface. Each "personality" appeared to be completely distinct from the next. When the study was over and Jonah was asked what he remembered the day before, he could only remember the questions he was asked prior to the surfacing of his alternative personalities, before being asked emotionally saturated questions. While multiple personality disorder is a very complex subject aside from that of simply state dependent memory, it is possible that the varying levels of memory each personality experienced had some relationship with mood dependent memory.

Knowledge and Memory: the Real Story Is that varuous chemical states of mind record all your observations in permanent memory.