New research by members of the Schizophrenia Neuropharmacology Research Group at Yale (SNRGY) has identified a potential relationship between neural noise and the psychosis-like effects of the principal active constituent of cannabis.
In an article that will appear in the December 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers Jose Cortes-Briones, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine; Cyril D’Souza, MD, Professor of Psychiatry; and colleagues in the research group reported on the psychosis-like effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal active constituent of cannabis.
THC induces psychosis-like effects in healthy people, and has been associated with increased risk of major psychosis in vulnerable people.
Researchers have long tried to determine why THC induces psychosis, and results of the Yale study indicate it may be related to THC’s ability to increase “noisy” brain activity, or random activity that interferes with the normal processing of information.
Yale researchers showed that subjects who were given doses of THC displayed an increase in random brain activity, suggesting that THC raises the proportion of random neural noise present in the electrical activity of the brain. There was also a strong positive relationship between brain noise and psychosis-like symptoms induced by THC.
The findings suggest the psychosis-like effects of THC may be related to its capacity to disrupt the brain’s normal processing of information by increasing neural noise.