clipped from: www.telegraph.co.uk Contrary to the common belief that smoking the drug destroys memory, researchers have found that it could actually keep the brain young.
The team at Ohio State University found that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the ageing brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.
Any new drug's properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its capability to produce a "high".
giving rats a constant dose of a cannabis derivative for three weeks.
A control group of rats received no intervention. In follow-up memory tests, in which rats were placed in a small swimming pool to determine how well they use visual cues to find a platform hidden under the surface of the water, the treated rats did better than the control rats in learning and remembering how to find the hidden platform