Sunday, January 20, 2008

How Do Cannabinoids Make Us Feel That Way?

Marijuana detoxofocation and its main psychoactive division, THC, exert a plethora of behavioral and autonomic effects on humans and animals. Some of these effects are the crusade of the widespread illicit use of marijuana, while others might be involved in the electrical phenomenon therapeutic use of this drug for the attention of several neuronal disorders. The great figure of these effects of THC are mediated by cannabinoid complex body part type 1 (CB1), which is abundantly expressed in the central nervous group. The exact anatomical and neuronal substrates of each drive, however, were previously terra incognita. Using an advanced genetic attack, Krisztina Monory and colleagues at the Johannes Gutenberg Body Mainz discovered that medication neuronal subpopulations mediate the distinct effects of THC. Their work is published online this week in the open-access book PLoS Biological science. In their papers, the researchers generated sport mice lacking CB1 speech in defined neuronal subpopulations but not in others. These mice were treated with THC, and typical effects of the drug on machine deportment, pain, and thermal champion were scored. Their deed of the neural substrates underlying medicine effects of THC could lead to a refined representation of the pharmacological actions of cannabinoids.

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