Researchers Discover Why Pot Makes You Forget

Scientists have found the area in the mouse brain that marijuana acts upon to cause forgetfulness, AFP reports. Researchers in Barcelona used two groups of mice, each engineered to be missing one of the two concentrations of receptor neurons for cannabis (CB1) in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory formation.

One group of mice performed in the usual forgetful fashion after being dosed with THC. But the other, whose CB1 receptor bundle had been removed neurons in the hippocampus, didn’t show any memory impairment. This means it may be possible to develop a synthetic cannabis molecule that delivers the drug’s analgesic effects without the side effect of cognitive impairment. (More cannabis stories.)