Can Inhaled THC Make People Hear Speech in White Noise?
Mokrysz and colleagues used two blinded, placebo-controlled experiments to examine whether inhaled cannabis affected reports of speech in white noise. All participants already used cannabis. The researchers also used a questionnaire to measure transient psychotic-like experiences, giving them two different ways to examine the response.
The task result differed across studies
Among 17 adults, THC-containing cannabis with or without CBD raised questionnaire scores compared with placebo. The white-noise task showed no detectable change in that experiment. In a second experiment with 20 adults and 20 adolescents, THC-containing cannabis increased the odds of reporting a speech illusion on the task, with an odds ratio of 3.1 and a 95% confidence interval of 1.3 to 7.2.
What an individual account can establish
The task captures what people reported hearing under a particular experimental setup. A person’s experience outside the laboratory has a different context and may have several explanations. An expert can describe the observed effects and the inconsistency between experiments without using the study to diagnose a person or assign the cause of an event.
Source
Mokrysz et al., Psychological Medicine
