Shortly after toking up, a lot of marijuana users find that there's one burning question on their minds: "why am I so hungry?" Researchers have been probing different parts of the brain looking for the root cause of the marijuana munchies for years. Now, a team of neuroscientists report that they have stumbled onto a major clue buried in a cluster of neurons they thought was responsible for making you feel full.
This cluster, called the POMC neurons, is in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that scientists typically associate with base instincts like sexual arousal, alertness, and feeding. Tamas Horvath, a neuroscientist at Yale University's School of Medicine and the team's leader, says that the POMC ...
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