Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
March 8, 2019
Alice Lucas, Audrey Thirion, Raymund Schwan et al.
Cannabis consumption is widespread across the world, and the co-occurrence of cannabis use and alcohol consumption is common. The study of background noise - resting-state neural activity, in the absence of stimulation - is an approach that could enable the neurotoxicity of these substances to be explored. Preliminary results have shown that delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) causes an...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
March 6, 2019
Ansgar Rougemont-Bücking, Henrik Jungaberle, Milan Scheidegger et al.
6 citations
Differences in mental health (MH) of users of distinct psychoactive substances have been shown. Both substance use (SU) and MH in users are influenced by stressful life events. This study compared MH parameters in distinct groups of substance users and evaluated the impact of stress factors on these outcomes. Data stem from the longitudinal Swiss Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors...
Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly
March 4, 2019
Alison Knopf
Lasting effects of adolescent cannabis use are even more pronounced than those for alcohol, researchers suggest in a new study of the role of impaired cognition on substance use. According to the study, published in the February issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, both alcohol and cannabis misuse are related to impaired cognition, but is this cause or correlation? To infer cause,...
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
March 1, 2019
Joaquim Soler, Bárbara Arias, Jorge Moya et al.
ABSTRACT The ZNF804A gene and cannabis use are risk factors for psychosis and both have also been associated with schizotypal traits. This study aimed to investigate: i) the association of lifetime cannabis use (and its dose effect) with schizotypal personality traits, and ii) whether the genetic variability at ZNF804A gene modulates that association. Our sample consisted of 385 Spanish...
Neuropsychopharmacology
February 2019
Max M Owens, Shannon McNally, Tashia Petker et al.
Worldwide, cannabis is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances and cannabis use has been implicated in poorer performance in several cognitive domains, including working memory (WM). However, the neural mechanisms underlying these WM decrements are not well understood and the current study investigated the association of cannabis involvement with WM performance and associated neural...
American Journal of Psychiatry
February 1, 2019
Philip D. Harvey
Societal attitudes toward cannabis use are changing rapidly. In the past decade, there has been awide-ranging movement toward removal of criminal sanctions on cannabis use, and in some localities cannabis use is permitted in a regulated manner, similar to alcohol. This movement has raised some concerns about whether we understand the full implications of cannabis use, particularly in younger...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
January 24, 2019
Claire M. Gorey, Lauren Kuhns, Eleni Smaragdi et al.
118 citations
The impact of cannabis on the adolescent compared to adult brain is of interest to researchers and society alike. From a theoretical perspective, adolescence represents a period of both risk and resilience to the harms of cannabis use and cannabis use disorders. The aim of this systematic review is to provide a critical examination of the moderating role of age on the relationship between...
Journal of Neuroscience
January 14, 2019
Catherine Orr, Philip A. Spechler, Zhipeng Cao et al.
100 citations
Rates of cannabis use among adolescents are high, and are increasing concurrent with changes in the legal status of marijuana and societal attitudes regarding its use. Recreational cannabis use is understudied, especially in the adolescent period when neural maturation may make users particularly vulnerable to the effects of Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on brain structure. In the current...
Drug and Alcohol Dependence
January 1, 2019
Charlotte E Farquhar, Christopher S Breivogel, Thomas F Gamage et al.
The recent NIH mandate to consider sex as a biological variable in preclinical research has focused attention on delineation of sex differences in behavior. To investigate mechanisms underlying sex differences in Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) effects, we examined the effects of sex and gonadal hormones on CB1 receptors in cerebellum, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and striatum. Adult...
Human Brain Mapping
January 2019
Dae-Jin Kim, Ashley M. Schnakenberg Martin, Yong-Wook Shin et al.
Cellular studies indicate that endocannabinoid type-1 retrograde signaling plays a major role in synaptic plasticity. Disruption of these processes by delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) could produce alterations either in structural and functional brain connectivity or in their association in cannabis (CB) users. Graph theoretic structural and functional networks were generated with diffusion...