The Brain Science Behind the Munchies

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AAnyone with some familiarity with cannabis can tell you that the cravings are real. Although this is a well-known phenomenon in science, research on it is lacking. Or at least that was the case until a study by Washington State University researchers was published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To better characterize what happens when we experience a craving (or “acute hyperphagia,” as they call it), Carrie Cuttler and Ryan McLaughlin of Washington State University asked 82 lucky participants to vape 20 or 40 milligrams of cannabis or a placebo and allowed them to choose from a selection of snacks.

“The human study found that, regardless of body mass index, time of last food consumption, gender, or amount of cannabis consumed, human participants who consumed cannabis during the trial ate significantly more food,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

So cravings seem to be a universal experience among human cannabis users, but what about rats? To answer this question, Cuttler and McLaughlin turned to their colleagues Matthew Hill and Catherine Hume at the University of Calgary. They performed a similar experiment, having rats high in a controlled environment and allowing them to press levers to obtain a food reward. Just like their human counterparts, stoned rats suffered serious snack attacks.

Read more: “The psychology of drugs – a lot”

“Sober animals are kind of like, ‘I’m full. Why do I care?’ They don’t make any effort. They barely work to have access to food,” Hill said. “But we smash them again, and even though they are now full and have eaten, they go away like they are starving.”

What exactly is happening? Our bodies naturally produce cannabinoids (called endocannabinoids) that regulate a multitude of things, from memory and mood to pain and appetite, by binding to receptors in our brain and throughout our body. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) wreaks havoc.

To find out which receptors THC acts on, researchers blocked cannabinoid receptors in the peripheral nervous systems of some rats and in the brains of others. They found that blocking cannabinoid receptors in the peripheral nervous system did nothing to curb the rats’ appetite, but blocking them in the brain did.

“That’s what really gives us the opportunity to determine whether it’s a brain or gut-based problem, and it generally shows that the cravings are mediated by the brain,” McLaughlin explained.

In the future, researchers hope that these new findings will lead to better treatments for disorders marked by decreased appetite. “There are many diseases, conditions and disorders associated with wasting syndromes and poor appetite, and this study really supports the idea that cannabis can be used medicinally to increase appetite in people who have conditions like HIV, AIDS or are undergoing chemotherapy,” Cutler said.

Until then, feel free to conduct your own research, responsibly of course.

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Main image: Chmee2 / Wikimedia Commons

• Jake Currie

  Published on February 23, 2026

  Jake Currie is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.