According to research done by a team of scientists at Yale School of Medicine, an active ingredient found in marijuana (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol for those of you who were wondering and now regret wondering because it’s not like you can even pronounce that word correctly on your first go-through) has been found to increase random neural activity, also known as neural noise, in the brains of healthy people who smoke marijuana. This discovery reportedly suggests that random neural activity plays a role in the “…psychosis-like effects of cannabis.” According to Daily Mail,
Dr Deepak D’Souza, a professor of psychiatry at Yale, said: ‘At doses roughly equivalent to half or a single joint, delta-9-THC produced psychosis-like effects and increased neural noise in humans.’
First author of the study, Dr Jose Cortes-Briones, a postdoctoral associate in psychiatry at Yale, added: ‘The dose-dependent and strong positive relationship between these two findings suggest that the psychosis-like effects of cannabis may be related to neural noise which disrupts the brain’s normal information processing.’
Researchers reportedly studied the effects of delta-9-THC in 24 human subjects over the course of 3 days. Subjects either received two doses of delta-9-THC intravenously or a double-blind and randomized placebo.
While the link between neural noise and psychosis has not yet been confirmed, “…the link between neural noise and psychosis could shed light on the biology of some of the symptoms associated with schizophrenia.”
The outcome of this link being confirmed or denied after further research could possibly become a talking point in the debate on the legalization of marijuana.
[H/T Daily Mail]