Andreas Zimmer and his team at the University of Bonn in Germany gave low doses of THC to young, mature and senior aged mice. What was interesting is that the elderly mice improved their performances on memory and learning tests “to the point that they resembled those of young, untreated mice.” According to Zimmer, “the effects were very robust, very profound.” (source)

As scientific American explains:

When the researchers examined the brains of the treated elderly mice for an explanation, they noticed that neurons in the hippocampus—a brain area critical for learning and memory—had sprouted more synaptic spines, the points of contact for communication between neurons. Even more striking, the gene-expression pattern in the hippocampi of THC-treated aged mice was radically different from that of untreated elderly mice. “That is something we absolutely did not expect: the old animals [that received] THC looked most similar to the young untreated control mice,” Zimmer says.

The interesting thing about these recent findings is that it corroborates with other interesting research when it comes to the brain, and age related diseases like Alzheimer’s, for example.

Recent research has found that in Alzheimer’s disease, compounds found in cannabis, like THC and CBD for example, might actually improve memory and ward off some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings were presented last year at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, it’s the world’s largest source of news about brain science and health.

The new findings showed that treating Alzheimer’s disease mice with the psychoactive compound found in marijuana improves memory and reduces neuronal loss, suggesting a possible therapy for the human disease.

You can read more about that here.

A recent study from the University of Kentucky and the University of Maryland concluded that a chemical in marijuana called cannabidiol (CBD) could be used to prevent alcohol-induced brain damage. The study was published in September of 2013 in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior. (source)

The study outlines how excessive alcohol consumption results in neuro-degeneration as well as behavioral and cognitive impairments that are hypothesized to contribute to the chronic and relapsing nature of alcoholism. As a result they aimed to study the transdermal delivery of cannabidiol (CBD) for the treatment of alcohol-induced neuro-degeneration.

You can read more about that here.

In the September 2018 edition of JAMA Psychiatry, researchers of the King’s College study in London, found that cannabidio significantly reset brains inclined towards psychosis back to normal states. You can read more about that here.

The list is long, it’s great to see more research continue to emerge.