If you're naturally prone to forgetting, then you should all the more stay away from Marijuana. That's because scientists may have already found the reason why weed impairs memory.

With the help of them ever-friendly lab rats, Neuroscientists at Rutgers University have found that the weed's active ingredient, THC, actually disrupts the hippocampus activity, that brain area linked to memory. Putting the rats under a standard memory test where they had to go through a maze in order to get water, with THC injected in them, they apparently became more prone to and actually committed more mistakes. Although there was no difference on how often the cells fired nerve impulses, it was the timing that was affected, as it got erratic.

Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki compared it to having an orchestra where the musicians are deafened and perhaps blindfolded. While they could still play their own pieces, it was without any feedback from the other instruments played by other musicians or the conductor. "What is missing is the temporal coordination."

What this suggests is that memory formation is crucially dependent on synchronized brain cell activity. Furthermore, THC impairs memory precisely by disrupting this set synchronized activity.

On the brighter side of things, however, there's also the suggestion that the way THC disrupts the synchronized brain cell activity could help fight epileptic seizures. The thing with seizures is that the brain activity becomes abnormally synchronized. So therefore, the idea is that THC's disruptive effect might actually temper down this abnormally synchronized activity. Then again, further studies still have to be conducted in order for that theory to be conclusive.

If you want to see the report on the findings, check out the December issue of the journal of Nature Neuroscience.

Err...what's the findings about again?