A new study claims cannabis use may cause accelerated brain aging, but experts say the findings appear to “prioritize marketing over science.”

A new study has identified cannabis, alcohol, and certain mental disorders as primary drivers of brain aging.
But experts have called the research into question over the methodology, which has a long history of criticism among members of the medical community.
In total, the team analyzed 62,454 SPECT scans of more than 30,000 patients ranging in age from under 1 year to 105 years old. The scans used for the study were all drawn from patients at Amen’s clinics.
“Based on one of the largest brain imaging studies ever done, we can now track common disorders and behaviors that prematurely age the brain. Better treatment of these disorders can slow or even halt the process of brain aging,” said lead author Daniel Amen.
The idea is that, at a given age, your body and organs should look and function a certain way and the brain is no different.
The effects of different conditions on the brain — such as substance use or mental disorders — can cause brains to age prematurely, resulting in lower cognitive function, declining memory, and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Using SPECT imaging technology and looking at blood perfusion (blood flow) in the brain, the researchers compared what they saw to the actual chronological age of the brain and established a “brain estimated age,” — how much the brain appeared to have aged.
Blood perfusion in the brain is known to change over time, and the researchers contend that using it as a biomarker could “powerfully predict chronological age and will vary as a function of common psychiatric brain disorders.”
The conditions they studied as drivers of brain aging included dementia, ADHD, major depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, alcohol use disorder, and cannabis use disorder.
Of these conditions, schizophrenia contributed to brain aging the most with an average of four years of premature aging, followed by cannabis abuse (2.8 years), bipolar disorder (1.6 years), ADHD (1.4 years), and alcohol abuse (0.6 years).
Part of what has brought attention to the study is the simple fact that cannabis use sits so high on that list.
However, that assertion, like others in the study, has come under fire.
Some studies have identified both THC and CBD — two of the many chemical components found within marijuana — as having potentially
Advocates disagree with how the drug is being characterized by Amen.
To say that Amen has a notorious reputation within the medical community would be an understatement.
He’s been called a fraud, a snake oil salesman, and a huckster.
One expert at UCLA’s Brain Research Institute contacted by Healthline said “I have nothing to add beyond what has already been said by others,” and suggested he should be investigated by the medical board.
He declined to comment further.
It uses radioactive tracers injected into the blood, which can be used to measure blood flow in the organs of the body or help detect and
Amen’s work uses SPECT to look at blood perfusion and activity in the brain to assist in identifying and diagnosing mental disorders, a contentious practice that’s frowned upon by his peers.
“Psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who virtually never look at the organ that they treat,” said Amen. He makes the intuitive argument that biomarkers and functional brain imaging should be used in psychiatry.
In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association issued a consensus report on the use of neuroimaging for psychiatric disorders and stated, “currently neuroimaging is not recommended within either the U.S. or the European practice guidelines for positively defining diagnosis of any primary psychiatric disorder.”
Seth J. Gillihan, PhD, a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania,
He says that using brain imaging diagnostically is definitely plausible because of the way some mental illnesses have identifiable biological markers, but the problems preventing its implementation are manifold.
Regarding Amen’s new study: its finding are exciting — if in fact they’re true.
“There may be multiple things that affect blood flow to the brain and we shouldn’t necessarily conclude that just because something has the same correlation with blood flow to the brain that age does, that therefore that condition is causing age-related changes in the brain,” he told Healthline.
For those looking in from the outside, Amen’s work can appear baffling and pseudoscientific.
But Amen argues that others in his field don’t share the same level of expertise that he and his team do from years and years and thousands of scans using SPECT technology.
“We have a database of 150,000 scans on patients from 120 countries. When we see a scan we really have a good sense of what it means,” he told Healthline.
For many, including Gillihan, that assertion isn’t enough to justify the claims made by Amen in his research.
It’s an attractive prospect to ascertain specific knowledge on mental health conditions, but experts say the technology just isn’t capable of doing this — yet.
As for the specific claims of this study?