{"id":29608,"date":"2016-08-25T12:27:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T12:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/?p=29608"},"modified":"2016-08-25T12:27:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T12:27:46","slug":"researchers-find-stoned-rats-just-cant-be-bothered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/25\/researchers-find-stoned-rats-just-cant-be-bothered\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers find stoned rats just can’t be bothered"},"content":{"rendered":"

THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less willing to exert cognitive effort \u2013 lazy \u2013 but, you know, that\u2019s just, like, your opinion, man.<\/p>\n

\"rat-weed\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The new research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, looked at the effects of both THC and the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD, on the male lab rats\u2019 willingness to exert cognitive effort.<\/p>\n

\"rat-weed2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers trained 29 rats on two different challenges: rats which successfully carried out the more difficult task earned two sugar pellets; those which carried out the easier task earned just one. Rats usually preferred the harder, but more rewarding, task. But after being dosed with THC, the same rats picked the easier task.<\/p>\n

CBD, which does not cause a high and is believed to have medicinal benefits such as relieving pain and the symptoms of epilepsy, had no impact on the rats\u2019 cognitive behaviour. It also did not mitigate the cognitive impact of THC in the rats. <\/p>\n

The THC did not make the rats less intelligent \u2013 just lazier, said the study\u2019s lead author, Mason Silveira, a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia. \u201cWhat\u2019s particularly interesting is though they were less likely to do these more difficult tasks they were still able to. There\u2019s this distinction between THC\u2019s ability to affect your cognition versus your willingness to actually use your cognitive abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less willing to exert cognitive effort \u2013 lazy \u2013 but, you know, that\u2019s just, like, your opinion, man. The new research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, looked at the effects of both THC and the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD, on…<\/p>\n

Read More “Researchers find stoned rats just can’t be bothered”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[297],"class_list":["post-29608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3u9vK-7Hy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29612,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29608\/revisions\/29612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}