Gilman Jodi M, Curran Max T, Calderon Vanessa, Schuster Randi M, Evins A Eden
Center for Addiction Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Psychiatry, Boston, MA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center in Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, MGH, Charlestown, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Center for Addiction Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Psychiatry, Boston, MA.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2016 Mar 1;1(2):152-159. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2015.11.002. Epub 2015 Nov 17.
Previous studies have reported that peer groups are one of the most important predictors of adolescent and young adult marijuana use, and yet the neural correlates of social processing in marijuana users have not yet been studied. In the current study, marijuana-using young adults (n = 20) and non-using controls (n = 22) participated in a neuroimaging social exclusion task called Cyberball, a computerized ball-tossing game in which the participant is excluded from the game after a pre-determined number of ball tosses. Controls, but not marijuana users, demonstrated significant activation in the insula, a region associated with negative emotion, when being excluded from the game. Both groups demonstrated activation of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC), a region associated with affective monitoring, during peer exclusion. Only the marijuana group showed a correlation between vACC activation and scores on a self-report measure of peer conformity. This study indicates that marijuana users show atypical neural processing of social exclusion, which may be either caused by, or the result of, regular marijuana use.
以往的研究报告称，同龄人群体是青少年和青年大麻使用的最重要预测因素之一，然而，大麻使用者社交处理的神经关联尚未得到研究。在当前的研究中，使用大麻的青年成年人（n = 20）和不使用大麻的对照组（n = 22）参与了一项名为Cyberball的神经成像社会排斥任务，这是一种电脑化的抛球游戏，在预先确定的抛球次数后，参与者会被排除在游戏之外。当被排除在游戏之外时，对照组（而非大麻使用者）在脑岛（一个与负面情绪相关的区域）表现出显著激活。在同伴排斥期间，两组都表现出腹侧前扣带回皮质（vACC，一个与情感监测相关的区域）的激活。只有大麻组显示出vACC激活与同伴从众性自我报告测量得分之间存在相关性。这项研究表明，大麻使用者在社会排斥方面表现出非典型的神经处理，这可能是由经常使用大麻导致的，也可能是其结果。
