Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

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J-P. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T dot CO.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific Americans' 60 Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

It's one of marijuana's most well-known side effects, the ravenous desire for food commonly called

the munchies. But why does weed make chocolate, chips, and, as the Harold and Kumar documentaries have

shown, White Castle Slidersiders so irresistible.

Finally, science may have an answer. The urge to eat is controlled by complex circuits of neurons

in the brain. Some of these nerve cells make us feel hungry, driving us to eat. Others cause us

to feel sated, so we put down the Doritos bag and stop filling our faces. To figure out how marijuana might hijack the

system, researchers exposed mice to a chemical that mimics the effect of the active ingredient in

cannabis, THC, by binding to the brain's THC receptors. These doped up rodents tend to keep

gnauthing, even if they've already eaten their fill. But what's going on in their

little mouse brains? Well, paradoxically, the researchers found that the cannabinoid receptor turns

on the neurons that normally make animals feel full. But what happens next is different from usual.

When the hay-in-full neurons get triggered by the THC receptors, they wind up sending a hey-, I'm still hungry, signal that sends us scrambling for the cupcakes.

This is your brain on drugs.

In addition to explaining 4 a.m. diner trips, the research in the journal Nature may be useful for addressing the medical condition of appetite loss, as commonly happens with cancer and depression, for example.

Knowing these details of neuronal activity could lead to better treatments for those patients

who could really benefit from the case of the munchies.

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