Pot-head rats forget where the cheese is

IT'S NOW OFFICIAL, cannabis sends your memory up in smoke according to a recent study, reports New Scientist.

Science geeks at the Rutgers University in New Jersey reckon they've figured out just why active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinoid, or THC, causes memory and learning problems.

Unusually happy rats were injected with a dose of THC equivalent to your average pothead's smoking of a regular sized joint. After monitoring the effects of the drugs using wire probes placed in the memory centre of the animals' brains, scientifically called the hippocampus (which has nothing to do with fat girls on Freshers' week), the geeks discovered that the cells in the hippocampus had their synchrony majorly reduced.

Usually hippocampus cells fire in sync, which creates a current of about 1 millivolt, however, THC heavily screwed with the syncing. The total number of firings were not reduced, but they tended to not occur at the same time - presumably a few of them were trotting down to the corner shop for some ice cream.

David Robbe of the University believes that the abnormal firings occur because THC binds to a receptor on the surface of the nerve cell, which blocks the flow of the current. Robbe reckons that nerves need to signal in sync in order to send a powerful message in the brain, and compared the firing to an audience clapping together as opposed to randomly, to show their desire for an encore.

Apparently, the effects of the THC wore off in a couple of hours, but Robbe and the gang hope to find out whether chronic, pardon the pun, exposure to THC causes long-term effects on the rat hippocampus. µ