THC effects include sluggish behaviour

The International Business Times reported on UBC research that found THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less likely to exert the cognitive effort needed for tough tasks.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that when we gave THC to these rats, they basically became cognitively lazy,” said Mason Silveira, the study’s lead author and a PhD candidate in UBC’s department of psychology. “What’s interesting, however, is that their ability to do the difficult challenge was unaffected by THC. The rats could still do the task— they just didn’t want to.”