Just half a joint of cannabis 'causes psychosis-like effects in healthy people that's similar to schizophrenia', say experts

dailymail.co.uk

Smoking cannabis can induce psychosis-like effects, similar to the symptoms people diagnosed with schizophrenia endure, scientists have said.

While past research as come this this conclusion in the past, the mechanisms underlying these effects are less clear.

Now, a team of scientists at Yale School of Medicine have found the active ingredient in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC) increases random neural activity, known as neural noise, in the brains of healthy drug-users.

Their findings suggest increased neural noise may play a role in the psychosis-like effects of cannabis.

Dr Deepak D'Souza, a professor of psychiatry at Yale, said: 'At doses roughly equivalent to half or a single joint, delta-9-THC produced psychosis-like effects and increased neural noise in humans.'

First author of the study, Dr Jose Cortes-Briones, a postdoctoral associate in psychiatry at Yale, added: 'The dose-dependent and strong positive relationship between these two findings suggest that the psychosis-like effects of cannabis may be related to neural noise which disrupts the brain's normal information processing.'