What Pot Really Does to Your Brain

I found this stuff on WebMD. Wow, truth is becoming mainstream!
Go here: http://webcenter.health.webmd.netsc...le/94/102660.htm?DEST=WebMD_contentSRC_nsmain

or just read it....

Brain Chemicals Suggest Marijuana's Effects
Natural Substances May Mirror Pot's Effects on the Brain
By Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News
Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD on Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Sept. 15, 2004 -- Marijuana is well known for its widespread effects on the brain. The key to understanding its impact may come from the brain's own pharmacy.
Brains make their own calming substances called cannabinoids, which are similar to marijuana's active ingredients.
Cannabinoids are made in the brain's cortex, an area which processes sensory information and orchestrates movement, thinking, learning, and emotions.
Scientists already knew that the cells in this area of the brain can make their own cannabinoids.
These cells (pyramidal) normally work to excite neighboring cells; using their homemade cannabinoids temporarily allows more information to be processed by lowering the brain's inhibition of excess information processing. By lulling other brain cells, cannabinoids temporarily leave the pyramid cells free to fire away.
Now, researchers at Stanford University in California have found that other type of brain cells -- LTS cells -- can also make cannabinoids.
LTS cells ordinarily keep pyramid cells in check. This process works to guard too much information being processed from pyramidal cells to neighboring cells within the brain region.
But when LTS cells make their own cannabinoids, they tune themselves out from surrounding cells.
As a result, the brain's pyramid cells are temporarily freed from inhibition. They then process excess information to other cells.
The effects can last up to 35 minutes.
Marijuana's active ingredients may behave the same way, latching on to these cannabinoid receptor sites allowing information to be process in an altered way.
"A loss of inhibition in pyramid cells could produce changes in perception, in motor function, and in everything the cerebral cortex does," researcher David Prince, MD, says in a news release.
Studying cannabinoid receptors may one day lead to drugs for conditions such as epilepsy, says Prince, the Edward F. and Irene Thiele Pimley professor of neurology and neurosciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.
During seizures pyramidal cells fire out of control, one reason may be that neighboring cells get shut down. Targeting and blocking cannabinoid receptors might quiet pyramidal cells activity.
Prince and Stanford colleagues based their study on lab rats. Their report appears in the Sept. 16 issue of Nature.

 

yeh i had been thinkning about it recently, and had come to beleive weed action had to do with getting rid of barriers in teh brain, not jsut psychologically, but chemically as well.

Natural Substances May Mirror Natural Substances' Effects on the Brain??????

lol

cept with epilepsy.. its interesting caus there are reports of weed helping wiht epelepsy, and other that show that weed has caused a fit.

must be two opposite types of epilepsy.. one thats caused by too much 'pyramid' cell activity.. and perhaps the other type is caused by all the extra, uninhibited brain activity.

i might look into it properly if i can be botehred.

 

Makes my synapses fire, and I think about things. Neural pathways are related to memory.

 

Not to be a normal High School student, because I do understand big words, but I really didn't have a clue what the article was talking about...

 

then i guess you jsut dont understand big enough words

 

Basically, Balko, the article said that the chemicals found in POT, can sometimes HELP with problems like ADD, and all the stuff that the shrinks give Children medicine for to control behavior. (Mostly at the request of a School!)
Something MANY of us have know for years. The point of this thread, was to tell everyone that it is becoming Mainstream news. (Finally!)

 

hmmmm, now i don't feel so bad exchanging Ritalin for Pot as a teenager.

Never did enjoy that Ritalin they forced me to take.

 

That's cool as seeing that I have ADHD (And thus is why i didn't understand the big words cause I didn't read that much of it...)

 

Matt, that is what I was going for. The truth of everything will come in it's own time, but I'm glad I'm going to be around for this... It's strange how I (and my generation) are going to be able to watch some major changes in the world in our lifetime.