---

---

---

---

Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds

---

---

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

The secret of internal bliss revealed

April 03, 2001

Scientists now know for sure how cannabis works in the brain. By studying naturally occuring cannabinoids they have found that cannabis 'speaks' to nerve cells instructing them to stop releasing their chemical neurotransmitters so dumbing down their effects. The upside is that it makes cannabis effective for treatment of MS but it also has a detrimental effect on short-term memory.

Dr Maurice Elphick (Queen Mary, University of London) is presenting a talk today at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting at the University of Kent, Canterbury where he will give evidence that nerve cells not only send signals in one direction across synapses in the brain, they also receive them back. "Whereas we used to think one nerve cell was doing all the talking, we now know that they are, in fact, having a two-way conversation ", says Dr Elphick, "and it is the endocannabinoids which are mediating this nervous dialogue".

The two cells involved in this 'conversation' are called the presynaptic cell (A) and the postsynaptic cell (B). Cell A produces the neurotransmitter which affects the behaviour of Cell B until Cell B produces chemical messengers which switch off Cell A. These chemical messengers are called endocannabinoids which are naturally occurring cannabinoids produced by the brain. Dr Elphick is studying one of these endocannabinoids, anandamide (named from the word "anand" meaning internal bliss). It binds to a cannabinoid receptor on Cell A telling it to stop releasing its neurotransmitter and then is broken down by an enzyme in Cell B.

Society for Experimental Biology