Why did the human body develop the ability to engage with cannabinoids? I’ve heard people postulating that we’re practically build to get high, as a justification for cannabis usage, but I can’t really believe it would be the main cause for this specific natural selection. I mean; from a darwinian perspective it doesn’t really make sense – how would getting high be survival of the fittest? Also, there exist other cannabinoids than THC, so what is the effect of these, and how present are they in our daily lives and what are the effect of these?
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They are often presynaptic receptors, and they reduce excitability of presynaptic neurones in response to a signal from the post synantic neuron, which is the opposite direction of transmission to normal neurotransmission.
Essentially they are a reverse breaking mechanism, the post synantic cell can send a message backwards, saying woah, reduce transmission
As others have said here, the brain produces it’s own chemicals and we happened to come across a plant that makes chemicals that imitate the ones our brain uses.
This is a common pattern: nicotine from the tobacco plant imitates acetylcholine in our brain, morphine from the poppy plant imitates endogenous opioids (e.g. endorhphins, endomorphin), and caffeine from the coffee, tea, and matè plants imitates adenosine. There’s more to it than that but it’s the same idea. Cannabinoids like THC imitated the endocannabinoids normally produced in our brain (anadamide, 2-AG).
For many years we had discovered the cannabinoid receptor in the brain but we didn’t know which brain chemical went with it. It would seem unlikely that nature gave us a cannabinoid receptor just so we could use the cannabis plant. So scientists kept searching and eventually found a new, previously unknown group of neurotransmitters, which they named the endocannabinoids, which literally means the cannabis-like chemicals from within the body.
As far as I’m aware, the cannabanoid system is involved in regulating memory. Specifically in “forgetting” superflous information. Throughout the day, we receive all manner of information that is largely irrelevant to our survival and, therefore, not worth storing permanently in our memory. Things like faces and clothing of strangers, vehicles and license plates, road signs and billboards, etc. This is related to the effect that the consumption of Cannabis has on short-term term memory.
In biology, we don’t like to think about “the original purpose” of any molecule. This is because it biases our way of thinking and slows down discovery. I like using gravity to illustrate this point. Gravity’s purpose isn’t to make us stick to Earth, rather gravity is just there and one of its virtues is making us stick to Earth. The second way of thinking opens our mind more for other ways in which gravity can act.
In the same way, cannabinoid receptors shouldn’t, scientifically, have an original purpose. They’re likely used for so many things in the body, and one of these things is to bind to cannabinoids.
Yeah, imagine the receptors being like the child’s toy where you have to match an object to a hole that’s the same shape as the object.
The fact that cannabinoid receptors are called what they are is that it was found out that the cannabinoid fits their “shape”.
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