Chronic cannabis use in humans is associated with a range of affective, cognitive, and neural alterations, including a higher incidence of depression and anxiety, deficits in memory and executive functions, and regional reductions in brain volume and white matter integrity. Emerging evidence indicates that these alterations are greater when cannabis use begins at an early age and can persist well into abstinence, indicating that adolescent cannabis exposure may have particularly deleterious effects on the developing brain. These findings are consistent with research in rodent models showing that administration of 9THC or other cannabinoid agonists during adolescence causes cognitive deficits and increased negative affect in adulthood. Notably, however, there is almost no research on the effects of adolescent exposure to cannabis smoke on neurobehavioral outcomes. The lack of such research is striking, not only because smoking is the preferred route of human cannabis use, but because cannabis smoke contains numerous cannabinoid and other compounds aside from 9THC, some of which are known to be psychoactive and may have lasting effects on the brain and behavior. Hence, in order to assess the causal impact of cannabis use, it is critical to employ a model that mimics the conditions of actual human exposure. The long-term goal of this research program is to determine how adolescent exposure to cannabis smoke affects adult emotional, cognitive, and brain structural/functional measures shown to be altered in human cannabis users. Important to this long-term goal, we have established a cannabis smoke exposure model in rats, which produces blood THC levels comparable to those found in humans and in which we have demonstrated cannabis dependence following chronic exposure. Building on these preliminary data, as well as published literature on cannabis users, our central hypothesis is that adolescent cannabis smoke exposure will cause deleterious effects on emotional and cognitive processing in adulthood that are accompanied by structural abnormalities in relevant brain circuitry. We will test this central hypothesis in a rat model by: 1) determining whether adolescent cannabis smoke exposure influences negative affect (measures of depression- and anxiety-like behavior) during adulthood; 2) determining whether adolescent cannabis smoke exposure influences multiple measures of memory and executive function in adulthood; 3) determining whether adolescent cannabis smoke exposure affects brain volume and white matter integrity during adulthood, using neuroimaging techniques similar to those employed in assessments of human cannabis users. In addition to informing medical and public policy decision making, findings from this project will lay the groundwork for a broader research program directed toward understanding the mechanisms by which developmental cannabis smoke exposure affects the brain and behavior.
Adolescent-onset cannabis smoking is associated with neurobehavioral deficits in adulthood, but the causal role of cannabis use in these deficits is unclear. The experiments in this proposal will use a rat model to determine whether adolescent exposure to cannabis smoke causes deficits in affective, cognitive, and brain structural measures in adulthood. Knowledge gained from these experiments will inform medical and public policy debates on cannabis use, and will help to establish a cannabis smoke exposure model for future research programs.
| Ravula, Abhigyan; Chandasana, Hardik; Setlow, Barry et al. (2018) Simultaneous quantification of cannabinoids tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol and CB1 receptor antagonist in rat plasma: An application to characterize pharmacokinetics after passive cannabis smoke inhalation and co-administration of rimonabant. J Pharm Biomed Anal 160:119-125 |
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| Bruijnzeel, Adriaan W; Qi, Xiaoli; Guzhva, Lidia V et al. (2016) Behavioral Characterization of the Effects of Cannabis Smoke and Anandamide in Rats. PLoS One 11:e0153327 |
