Poster No:
498
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Ethan Murphy1, Chao Suo2, Nadia Solowij3, Lisa Greenwood4, Mark Schira5, Arush Honnedevasthana Arun1, Eugene McTavish6, Suraya Dunsford7, Gabrielle Abbott8, Jessica Ramamurthy9, Anastasia Paloubis10, Govinda Poudel1, Valentina Lorenzetti11
Institutions:
1Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Victoria, 2BrainPark, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health,, Melbourne, Victoria, 3School of Psychology, University of Wollongong and the Australian Centre for Cannabinoid Clinical, Wollongong, New South Wales, 4School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University and The Australian Centre for, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 5School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, 6Neuroscience of Addiction and Mental Health Program, Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre, Faculty, Melbourne, Victoria, 7School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom, 8University of Wollongong, Wollongong, nsw, 9School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, act, 10Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, vic, 11Valentina Lorenzetti, Fitzroy, AK
First Author:
Ethan Murphy
Australian Catholic University
Melbourne, Victoria
Co-Author(s):
Chao Suo
BrainPark, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health,
Melbourne, Victoria
Nadia Solowij
School of Psychology, University of Wollongong and the Australian Centre for Cannabinoid Clinical
Wollongong, New South Wales
Lisa Greenwood
School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University and The Australian Centre for
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
Mark Schira
School of Psychology, University of Wollongong
Wollongong, New South Wales
Eugene McTavish
Neuroscience of Addiction and Mental Health Program, Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre, Faculty
Melbourne, Victoria
Suraya Dunsford
School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth
Plymouth, United Kingdom
Jessica Ramamurthy
School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University
Canberra, act
Introduction:
Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is highly prevalent and associated with failed attempts to cut down or quit use despite negative psychosocial outcomes, such as craving and mental health disorders (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2024; Leung et al., 2020). Prominent neuroscientific theories have ascribed negative outcomes to addiction-related neuroadaptations, particularly in prefrontal-striatal pathways, which exacerbate with the severity of addiction. However, these theories are largely derived from animal studies based on substances other than cannabis (Volkow et al., 2016). Emerging evidence reveals that people who use cannabis have different resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) between prefrontal and striatal regions as a function of chronicity of use (Thomson et al., 2022), but no study to date has examined rsFC in CUD. We aim to fill this knowledge gap and to test if altered rsFC is associated with CUD compared to controls in a-priori prefrontal-striatal regions of interest (ROIs) of the addiction neurocircuitry (i.e., anterior cingulate cortex [ACC], pallidum, nucleus accumbens and putamen), and if rsFC changes are associated with the chronicity of cannabis use and the severity of CUD.
Methods:
We compared rsFC between seven ROIs and the rest of the brain (i.e., ACC, bilateral pallidum, nucleus accumbens and putamen) in 79 people with mild-severe CUD and 30 controls using CONN toolbox v.22a, (Harvard-Oxford Atlas Parcellation), while controlling for age, sex, and alcohol use (p<0.05, Bonferroni corrected). Correlations between significant region-whole brain pairings and level of cannabis use (e.g., CUD severity, cannabis use days per month, age of onset) were run using SPSS v.29.
Results:
CUD vs control groups demonstrated different rsFC between the ACC, the right precuneus, and bilateral postcentral gyrus. No significant rsFC differences emerged between the other ROIs examined and whole brain. Within the CUD group, ACC-postcentral gyrus rsFC significantly correlated with the age of onset of regular cannabis use (r = 0.24, p < 0.05). No other significant correlations emerged.
Conclusions:
CUD may be associated with alterations of inhibitory prefrontal-parietal networks previously implicated with addictive behaviour (Volkow et al.,2016) and high in cannabinoid receptors (Glass et al., 1997). Such alterations may be associated with the onset of cannabis use affecting these neural pathways due to the regular exposure to Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-mediated adaptation of dopaminergic signalling, but this notion needs to be confirmed by longitudinal studies that predate cannabis use onset and that integrate objective assessment of cannabis potency.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural) 2
Keywords:
Addictions
Data analysis
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Statistical Methods
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
By submitting your proposal, you grant permission for the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) to distribute your work in any format, including video, audio print and electronic text through OHBM OnDemand, social media channels, the OHBM website, or other electronic publications and media.
I accept
The Open Science Special Interest Group (OSSIG) is introducing a reproducibility challenge for OHBM 2025. This new initiative aims to enhance the reproducibility of scientific results and foster collaborations between labs. Teams will consist of a “source” party and a “reproducing” party, and will be evaluated on the success of their replication, the openness of the source work, and additional deliverables. Click here for more information.
Propose your OHBM abstract(s) as source work for future OHBM meetings by selecting one of the following options:
I am submitting this abstract as an original work to be reproduced. I am available to be the “source party” in an upcoming team and consent to have this work listed on the OSSIG website. I agree to be contacted by OSSIG regarding the challenge and may share data used in this abstract with another team.
Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Resting state
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Patients
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
NOTE: Any animal studies without IACUC approval will be automatically rejected.
Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
3.0T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
Other, Please list
-
CONN
Provide references using APA citation style.
Glass, M., Dragunow, M., & Faull, R. L. (1997). Cannabinoid receptors in the human brain: a detailed anatomical and quantitative autoradiographic study in the fetal, neonatal and adult human brain. Neuroscience, 77(2), 299–318. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0306-4522(96)00428-9
Leung, J., Chan, G. C., Hides, L., & Hall, W. D. (2020). What is the prevalence and risk of cannabis use disorders among people who use cannabis? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Addictive Behaviors, 109, 106479.
Thomson, H., Labuschagne, I., Greenwood, L. M., Robinson, E., Sehl, H., Suo, C., & Lorenzetti, V. (2022). Is resting-state functional connectivity altered in regular cannabis users? A systematic review of the literature. Psychopharmacology (Berl)(1432-2072 (Electronic)). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-021-05938-0
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC]. (2024). World Drug Report (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.20.XI.6), Issue. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/world-drug-report-2024.html
Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F., & McLellan, A. T. (2016). Neurobiologic Advances from the Brain Disease Model of Addiction. N Engl J Med, 374(4), 363-371. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1511480
No