Current Addiction Reports
September 8, 2023
Anna Ross, Jake Hawthorn
Abstract Purpose of Review The use of certain illicit substances as a form of therapy, and particularly as an adjunct to psychotherapy, has gained increasing media and academic attention over the last decade, culminating in what has been coined “the psychedelic renaissance.” This section in Current Addiction Reports has been developed in order to highlight the new and emerging research around...
Addictive Behaviors
September 2023
Kat Petrilli, Lindsey A. Hines, Sally Adams et al.
Cannabis potency (concentration of Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol) has been associated with risks of adverse mental health outcomes and addiction but no studies have triangulated evidence from self-report and objective measures of cannabis potency. We hypothesised that users of high potency cannabis would have higher levels of (a) anxiety, (b) depression and (c) psychosis-like symptoms (d) cannabis...
Life Sciences
August 15, 2023
Lily Freeman-Striegel, John Hamilton, Renuka Kannappan et al.
Acute and chronic Δ9-THC exposure paradigms affect the body differently. More must be known about the impact of chronic Δ9-THC on cannabinoid-1 (CB1R) and mu-opioid (MOR) receptor levels in the brain. The present study examined chronic Δ9-THC's effects on CB1R and MOR levels and locomotor activity. Adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats were given daily intraperitoneal injections of Δ9-THC [0.75mg/kg...
Addiction Biology
August 2023
Constanza Garcia-Keller, Madeline Hohmeister, Kailyn Seidling et al.
Drugs of abuse induce cell type-specific adaptations in D1- and D2-medium spiny neurons (MSNs) in the nucleus accumbens core (NAcore) that can bias signalling towards D1-MSNs and enhance relapse vulnerability. Whether Δ9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) use initiates similar neuroadaptations is unknown. D1- and D2-Cre transgenic rats were transfected with Cre-dependent reporters and trained to...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
July 2023
Ahmed Hasbi, Bertha K. Madras, Susan R George
Frequent cannabis use is associated with a higher risk of developing cannabis use disorder and other adverse consequences. However, rodent models studying the underlying mechanisms of the reinforcing and withdrawal effects of the primary constituent of cannabis, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), have been limited. This study investigated the effects of daily THC (1 mg/kg, intraperitoneal, 9 days)...
Cerebral Cortex
May 4, 2023
Xinying Wang, Hui Zhou, Yuzheng Hu
Negative emotional state has been found to correlate with poor cognitive performance in cannabis-dependent (CD) individuals, but not healthy controls (HCs). To examine the neural substrates underlying such unusual emotion-cognition coupling, we analyzed the behavioral and resting state fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project and found opposite brain-behavior associations in the CD and HC...
Psychopharmacology
May 2023
Briac Halbout, Collin Hutson, Leann Hua et al.
The endocannabinoid system makes critical contributions to reward processing, motivation, and behavioral control. Repeated exposure to THC or other cannabinoid drugs can cause persistent adaptions in the endocannabinoid system and associated neural circuitry. It remains unclear how such treatments affect the way rewards are processed and pursued. We examined if repeated THC exposure (5...
Psychopharmacology
April 2023
Lucas Weyrich, Yasra Arif, Mikki Schantell et al.
Cannabis use is often associated with the use of other psychoactive substances, which is subsequently linked to an increased risk for addiction. While there is a growing body of neuroimaging literature investigating the cognitive effect of long-term cannabis use, very little is known about the potential additive effects of cannabis polysubstance use. Fifty-six adults composed of 18...
March 15, 2023
Will Lawn, Xuejun Hao, Anna B. Konova et al.
preprint
Background: Despite the critical role of choice processes in substance use disorders, the neurobehavioral mechanisms guiding human decisions about drugs remain poorly understood. We adapted a neuroeconomic framework to characterize the neural encoding of subjective value (SV) for cannabis versus non-drug rewards (snacks) in near-daily cannabis users. We also assessed the impact of cannabis and...
Scientific Reports
January 13, 2023
Thomas Schnell, Christina-Marie Grömm, Nils Klöckner
3 citations
Cannabis use is a common risk factor for psychoses. But although prevalence of consumption as well as potency of cannabis increased, the incidence of schizophrenia remained stable. The discontinuation hypothesis suggests that a potential increase of psychoses incidence may be relativized by more frequent cessation of consumption due to higher rates of adverse psychosis-like intoxication effects...