Weed smokers are usually characterised as bumbling paranoiacs incapable of remembering anything useful. But it turns out cannabis could actually boost the memories of older people and make their brain ‘younger’. A scientific study has found that feeding ganja to ageing mice boosted their brain power significantly. Researchers from the University of Bonn pumped THC, the chemical in weed which gets you stoned, into rodents of a certain age to find that a ‘chronic low dose restores cognitive function in old mice’.
What this means is that the mice were given a little bit of weed every day and it resulted in older animals performing as well in tests as younger competitors. ‘We treated old mice with a low dose of the active ingredient in cannabis,’ Andreas Zimmer, a professor at the Institute of Molecular Psychiatry, told Deutsche Welle.
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‘Learning and memory functions improved dramatically in these animals, and they performed as well as mice that were much, much younger. ‘What we observed was quite staggering.’
To test their brain power, mice were tasked with finding a hidden platform. Normally, older mice would take longer to find the platform and remember where it was. But the stoned old rodents were able to perform just as well as the youthful whippersnappers. However, be warned: scientists believe weed has the opposite effect on unripened humans. Zimmer said blazing herbs makes young humans’ memory worse, although they can combat the effect by giving up weed.
Credit: metro.co.uk
