Abstract
Rationale
Intact cognitive and emotional functioning is vital for the long-term success of addiction treatment strategies. Accumulating evidence suggests an association between chronic marijuana use and lasting alterations in cognitive brain function. Despite initial evidence for altered emotion processing in dependent marijuana users after short abstinence periods, adaptations in the domain of emotion processing after longer abstinence remain to be determined.
Objective and methods
Using task-based and resting state fMRI, the present study investigated emotion processing in 19 dependent marijuana users and 18 matched non-using controls after an abstinence period of > 28 days.
Results
Relative to the control subjects, negative emotional stimuli elicited increased medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) activity and stronger mOFC-dorsal striatal and mOFC-amygdala functional coupling in dependent marijuana users (p < 0.022, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, mOFC-dorsal striatal functional connectivity was increased at rest in marijuana users (p < 0.03, FWE-corrected). Yet, processing of positive stimuli and subjective ratings of valence and arousal were comparable in both groups.
Conclusions
Together, the present findings provide the first evidence for persisting emotion processing alterations in dependent marijuana users. Alterations might reflect long-term neural adaptations as a consequence of chronic marijuana use or predisposing risk factors for the development of marijuana dependence.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Paul Jung and Laura Schinabeck for their excellent technical support. Kaeli Zimmermann and Shuxia Yao contributed equally to this work.
Funding
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, grant: BE5465/2-1, Becker; HU1302/4-1, Hurlemann) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, grant: 91632117, Becker).
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All subjects gave written informed consent before study inclusion. The study was in accordance with the latest revision of the Declaration of Helsinki, had full ethical approval by the local ethics committee of the medical faculty, University of Bonn (Application Number: 220/12), and was registered as clinical trial (NCT02711371, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02711371).
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Zimmermann, K., Yao, S., Heinz, M. et al. Altered orbitofrontal activity and dorsal striatal connectivity during emotion processing in dependent marijuana users after 28 days of abstinence. Psychopharmacology 235, 849–859 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-017-4803-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-017-4803-6