14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists with the Universite de Bordeaux in France discovered in a new study that food and marijuana cravings share the same neural mechanism in the human brain. The team found that the same receptors light up in mice when they are deprived of the drug as when they fast.
This research may help explain why food always appears to taste and smell better the hungrier we get. Scientists have been trying to find out how these sensations are generated for years, but pinpointing the intricate neural mechanisms underlying these processes has proven difficult.
In the mouse model study, the French team administered marijuana to the tiny rodents, while making another mouse group fast. The researchers then scanned the brains of all mice, and determined that the same neural populations lit up in response to both situations.
The findings lend additional credence to a hypothesis arguing that food and drug addiction are not that different after all, at least as far as the chemistry of the brain is concerned. Details of the new study appear in the February 9 issue of the top scientific journal Nature Neuroscience.
Neuroscientist Giovanni Marsicano says that fasting mice experienced the addiction-like effect only after their sense of smell was boosted to abnormally high performance levels. The team says that the activated neural receptors are mostly located in the smelling center of the mouse brain.
While significant differences exist between humans and mice as far as smell goes, researchers have clear indications that the same type of connection is valid in humans too, at least to some extent, NPR reports.
In mice, marijuana appears to trigger the infamous munchies through the sense of smell. More work is needed to establish whether or not a similar mechanism is responsible for the same type of behaviors in humans as well.
The group found that skipping a meal caused the mouse brain to produce substances called endocannabinoids (ECB), which are a part of the same family of chemicals as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active compound in pot. In humans, ECB are known to play a role in pain suppression.