Experiments carried out on mice suggest cannabis can foster motor and learning problems

Jun 25, 2013 12:24 GMT  ·  By

People who are chronic cannabis users risk developing motor and learning problems at some point in their lives, researcher Andrés Ozaita, of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, warns.

The specialist suspects that this happens because chemical compounds that work their way into a person's body after they consume marijuana trigger brain inflammation.

More precisely, they negatively affect a brain region (i.e. the cerebellum) responsible for ensuring proper coordination and supervising learning behavior. Live Science reports that Andrés Ozaita and his colleagues reached this conclusion after carrying out a series of experiments on laboratory mice.

What they did was give the rodents THC (delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol), and then make them perform various tasks.

For those unaware, THC is the active ingredient in cannabis, so data collected with the help of these mice could indicate how the human body responds to chronic exposure to said drug.

The same sources inform us that, after being administered THC, the animals got rather poor scores both in tests designed to test their coordination abilities, and in tests meant to shed new light on their learning behavior.

Once the rodents were no longer administered THC, it was not long before their motor and learning problems were gone.

The scientists who carried out these experiments say that, according to their investigations into the matter at hand, THC does not directly affect the cerebellum.

Still, it triggers the activation of so-called microglial cells. These cells are basically immune cells found in the cerebellum, and it is their activation that ultimately leads to brain inflammation.

Andrés Ozaita and his fellow researchers say that further investigations into the matter at hand are very much needed.

They wish to determine whether marijuana consumption could foster coordination and learning problems that are hard to notice but that could endanger a person's life.

A detailed account of this investigation and its findings will be published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation this coming July 1.