Research at The Health and Congition (THC) Lab: Interview with Carrie Cuttler, PhD

In our Higher Education: Research Initiatives That Deepen Our Understanding of Cannabis supplement, Cannabis Science and Technology interviewed Carrie Cuttler, PhD, Co-Director of the Center for Cannabis Policy Research and Outreach (CCPRO) at Washington State University.

In this video clip, Dr. Cuttler explains the research she has completed at The Health and Cognition (THC) Lab at WSU. The studies have focused the effects of chronic use and acute use of cannabis.

Check out our interactive supplement to read the full expert interviews, including an interview with Reginald Gaudino, PhD, Director of the Cannabis Research Institute, Discovery Partners Institute.

Transcription

Erin McEvoy: Can you tell us more about The Health and Cognition Lab at WSU, how did you first become involved, and how have you seen the program evolve?

Carrie Cuttler: Yeah, so this is my lab. I established this lab when I first came to Washington State University in 2014. When I first arrived at WSU, the legal cannabis dispensaries were first opening their doors, and so I really thought that cannabis research in our state especially would be critically important and very much needed. I established The Health and Cognition Lab, and I really started back then just looking at the effects of the regular chronic use of cannabis, due to the legal barriers surrounding the acute effects of cannabis. Because cannabis is a Schedule I drug, according to the federal government, and we are a federally funded institution, so we have to abide by federal law, it's very difficult to do research on the acute effects. So I started by just looking at the effects of chronic cannabis use when people are entirely sober. Looking at effects, for example, on cognition and memory and things like that.

Then I started to find and use some legal workarounds to try to understand more about the acute effects of cannabis. So I was analyzing big app data from a medical cannabis app, looking at symptom ratings before and after use as a function of different products and doses and whatnot. I also developed a Zoom method where we randomly assign people to purchase and use specific products sold at legal dispensaries, bring them home, use them at home on Zoom when we observe them, and then we would look at various outcomes, again, predominantly focusing on cognition, and those acute effects on cognition.

Now I'm actually running proper placebo-controlled laboratory investigations of THC and some minor cannabinoids, collaborating with Dr. McLaughlin, who has a Schedule 1 license with the DEA, and we have FDA approval. We're actually currently just about to finish this week, the very first FDA approved clinical trial of cannabis in the State of Washington.

McEvoy: Are you able to tell us some of the significant results from the research?

Cuttler: Yes, I mean that study we largely devised and designed to look at the acute effects of a lower dose, 20 milligrams, a higher dose, 40 milligrams of THC, on various aspects of memory relative to a placebo group. And I was trying to figure out which aspects of memory are impaired and which aspects are spared by acute cannabis intoxication, because most research on memory is just focused on verbal memory, and some studies have looked at things like working memory, but they really haven't looked at the entire like gamut of different kinds of memory, including prospective memory, temporal order memory, false memory and all this stuff. And what I'm finding is that cannabis just broadly negatively impacts basically every aspect of memory. We're not seeing much evidence that anything is very spared here. We're finding pretty robust effects on every aspect of memory.

Because we have to keep people in the lab for a full four hours after they inhale cannabis to make sure they're entirely sober, and we can only test their memory for an hour, we have them for an extra three hours. So for three hours, they spend their time in a chill out room, and it's filled with snacks and entertainment, PlayStation, but also a movie theater concession stand of snacks, essentially. And we observe them through a one-way mirror, and we're looking at the munchies phenomenon as well, and we're finding very robust evidence for the munchies phenomenon that when people are acutely intoxicated, they're eating about double the calories of people who are on the placebo.

McEvoy: Are you going to do more in the future?

Cuttler: Yes, we would. Hopefully, this is just the first of many, we're currently planning the follow up study where we're going to also look at various aspects of cognition, but then we'll also use EEG to look at brain activity.