Low cannabis dose may boost old brains

• Autores: Michael Le Page
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3125, 2017, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In some cultures, it's traditional for elders to smoke grass, a practice said to help them pass on knowledge. They might just be onto something: low doses of the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, seem to reverse brain ageing in elderly mice. Andreas Zimmer at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his team are studying the endocannabinoid system, which helps balance out the bodies' response to stress. His team gave young, middle-aged and elderly mice a steady but low dose of THC. After a month, the group tested the mice's cognitive abilities, such as how well they could navigate a maze or recognize other individuals. Among the mice that received no THC, the middle-aged and elderly animals did far worse than the young ones. But the middle-aged and elderly mice given THC performed as well as the young mice in the control group.