Professor Greg Gerdeman on brain science, the neurobiology of stress, and how the discovery of the endocannabinoid system has liberated cannabis from the drug abuse paradigm. Cannabis Conversations is a video series featuring interviews with key opinion leaders in the medical marijuana industry.
Transcript:
Project CBD: We’re speaking with Greg Gerdeman, a neuroscientist and professor of biology at Eckerd College in Florida. Greg Gerdeman is one of the few professors that we know of who actually teaches classes on something called the “endocannabinoid system.” What is the endocannabinoid system? Why do you teach classes on that, and what’s its significance?
Greg Gerdeman: The endocannabinoid system is an area of research that’s been my focus for 20-some years. It was discovered by understanding how cannabis works. So cannabis works at the endocannabinoid system. It’s a broad way to speak about it. But partly what’s so exciting is that as scientists have studied the endocannabinoid system to understand cannabis, we’ve really come to learn a tremendous amount more about how our brains, our bodies work. How we work, not just how cannabis works. So to the education piece, I’m a neuroscientist and now teaching about how the brain works and processes information, how different circuits work in the brain, endocannabinoids are such an integral part of that, that it should be part of neuroscience curriculums, let alone a course in and of itself.
Project CBD: So what do we specifically mean by endocannabinoid system?
Gerdeman: Well, it means, first and foremost I think the receptors by which THC and other cannabinoids act. So, the targets of how cannabis works and an intrinsic set of neuromodulators called endocannabinoids that are released by cells and act at the receptors. So, although the system is distributed throughout the body, I tend to think about the brain and it’s very highly utilized by the brain. And, as an example of how the brain works with endocannabinoids, a given neuron – a cell within the brain receiving thousands of different inputs – will release endocannabinoids, these small signaling molecules, to fine-tune the strength of their own synaptic inputs. So the endocannabinoids are signaling molecules that are created and broken down by enzymes in the body. They act at cell surface receptors that change the activity of cells. And all of this – the signaling molecules, the enzymes that make them and break them down, the receptors that exert the effects of the compounds – are bundled up into what we call the endocannabinoid system.
Project CBD: So when you talk about “endocannabinoids,” you’re talking about molecules that exist in our own brains and bodies.
Gerdeman: Right.
Project CBD: Would it be correct to say they’re marijuana-like molecules? How do they relate to THC and CBD, or other components of the plant, these endocannabinoids in our own body?
Gerdeman: In some ways, it’s fair to say that. And people say it’s like the body’s own marijuana. A structural chemist they might take some objection to that because the structures [of the molecules] don’t look that much alike. But functionally, which is what a physiologist thinks about, the physiology of how anandamide binds to and changes cellular activity binding a cannabinoid receptor is actually quite similar to THC.
For a full transcript of the video, check out: projectcbd.org/cannabis-conversations-brain-science-endocannabinoid-system