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🔗 The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893–1894

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The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report (1894) is often highly lauded by those who approve of its recommendation in favour of the regulation and taxation of cannabis. This paper discusses the report in the light of current evidence. The Commission found that excessive ganja use could cause psychosis, but such use was rare. It recommended that cannabis should be regulated and taxed rather than prohibited, because most cannabis use did not cause harm, regulation and taxation would limit excessive use and prohibition would prevent its medical use and generate an illicit cannabis market. The report's analysis of the role of cannabis in psychosis is consistent with recent epidemiological evidence. Historical scholarship, however, raises serious doubts about the extent to which the Commission's findings on cannabis regulation were affected …

🔗 Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms

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Microbes in the gastrointestinal tract are under selective pressure to manipulate host eating behavior to increase their fitness, sometimes at the expense of host fitness. Microbes may do this through two potential strategies: (i) generating cravings for foods that they specialize on or foods that suppress their competitors, or (ii) inducing dysphoria until we eat foods that enhance their fitness.

🔗 A manifesto for reproducible science - Nature Human Behaviour

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"Improving the reliability and efficiency of scientific research will increase the credibility of the published scientific literature and accelerate discovery. Here we argue for the adoption of measures to optimize key elements of the scientific process: methods, reporting and dissemination, reproducibility, evaluation and incentives. There is some evidence from both simulations and empirical studies supporting the likely effectiveness of these measures, but their broad adoption by researchers, institutions, funders and journals will require iterative evaluation and improvement. We discuss the goals of these measures, and how they can be implemented, in the hope that this will facilitate action toward improving the transparency, reproducibility and efficiency of scientific research."

🔗 Rat Park: How a rat paradise changed the narrative of addiction - Gage - 2019 - Addiction - Wiley Online Library

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‘Rat Park’ is the name given to a series of studies undertaken in the late 1970s by Bruce K. Alexander and colleagues. They found that rats housed in enriched environments consumed less morphine solution than those in isolated cages, when rats were pre‐exposed to morphine, naive to morphine, and whether they had spent their early life in isolation or in enriched housing. The measured conclusions from the authors at the time have become somewhat lost in translation.

🔗 Association between particulate matter air pollution and risk of depression and suicide: systematic review and meta-analysis

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"The meta-analysis suggested that an increase in ambient PM2.5 concentration was strongly associated with increased depression risk in the general population, and the association appeared stronger at long-term lag and cumulative lag patterns, suggesting a potential cumulative exposure effect over time."