A cellular basis for the munchies

摘要

According to data gathered by the United Nations, 177 million people around the globe use marijuana. So some of you might be familiar with the munchies - that inexplicable drive to eat, stimulated by the active ingredients of marijuana, the cannabinoids. This connection has already led to the development of dronabinol, a synthetic version of the natural cannabinoid A-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, as a treatment for the metabolic disorder cachexia anorexia syndrome. But how, and where in the brain, do cannabinoids work to stimulate food intake? In this issue, Koch et al. (page 45) report that, when given in doses meant to simulate the effects of marijuana, cannabinoids surprisingly activate a subset of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons, a cell group in the brains hypothalamus that has a central role in inhibiting hunger.