Gross morphological brain changes with chronic, heavy cannabis use

SzAdmin · September 15, 2015, 4:32pm

Heavy cannabis users demonstrated smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes, but no alterations of the orbitofrontal and anterior- and paracingulate cortices, or the pituitary gland. These findings indicate that chronic cannabis use has a selective and detrimental impact on the morphology of the mediotemporal lobe.

Source:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Gross morphological brain changes with chronic, heavy cannabis use.

V Lorenzetti, N Solowij, S Whittle, A Fornito, DI Lubman, C Pantelis and M Yücel, The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, Jan 2015

We investigated the morphology of multiple brain regions in a rare sample of 15 very heavy cannabis users with minimal psychiatric comorbidity or significant exposure to other substances (compared with 15 age- and IQ-matched non-cannabis-using controls) using manual techniques. Heavy cannabis users demonstrated smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes, but no alterations of the orbitofrontal and anterior- and paracingulate cortices, or the pituitary gland. These findings indicate that chronic cannabis use has a selective and detrimental impact on the morphology of the mediotemporal lobe.