Abbott Gabrielle, Greenwood Lisa, Bartschi Jessica G, Dunsford Suraya, Goodwin Isabella, Paloubis Anastasia, Valera Marianna Quinones, McTavish Eugene, Verdejo-Garcia Antonio, Cousijn Janna, Chan Gary C K, Solowij Nadia, Lorenzetti Valentina
School of Psychology, Faculty of the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Compr Psychiatry. 2025 Oct;142:152620. doi: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2025.152620. Epub 2025 Jul 10.
Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is highly prevalent with ∼44 million cases worldwide. CUD has been associated with compulsive use despite experiencing adverse psychosocial outcomes. Such adverse outcomes of CUD have been attributed to altered cognition - a set of mental processes that support the organisation and implementation of goal-directed behaviour. However, the evidence is mixed and limited by methodological issues including inconsistent assessment of CUD and metrics of cannabis use.
OBJECTIVE/METHODS: This study examined distinct domains of cognition (i.e., executive function, working memory, episodic memory, verbal reasoning, attention, IQ) in 115 participants aged 18.5 to 32.5 years. We compared performance between 83 participants who endorsed a CUD and 32 controls. We also explored whether the level of problematic cannabis use, and cannabis grams/past month was associated with cognition in CUD. All analyses accounted for alcohol/nicotine use and trait anxiety.
CUD compared to control participants showed significantly lower IQ, with a strong effect size (p < .001, d = 0.862), which was driven by lower verbal IQ, and survived adjusting for education years. There were no other significant effects of group or associations between cognition, level of problematic cannabis use, or dosage.
Altered cognition in young adults who endorse a CUD may be specific to verbal IQ. Future work is required to confirm whether these findings generalise to CUD samples across the lifespan, including the most vulnerable individuals with a CUD who are seeking or receiving treatment and that endorse comorbid psychopathologies.
大麻使用障碍（CUD）在全球范围内极为普遍，约有4400万例。尽管经历了不良的心理社会后果，但CUD仍与强迫性使用相关。CUD的这些不良后果归因于认知改变，认知是一组支持目标导向行为的组织和实施的心理过程。然而，证据不一，且受方法学问题的限制，包括对CUD评估不一致以及大麻使用指标不同。
目的/方法：本研究调查了115名年龄在18.5至32.5岁之间参与者的不同认知领域（即执行功能、工作记忆、情景记忆、语言推理、注意力、智商）。我们比较了83名认可CUD的参与者和32名对照组参与者的表现。我们还探讨了问题性大麻使用水平以及每月大麻使用克数是否与CUD患者的认知相关。所有分析都考虑了酒精/尼古丁使用和特质焦虑。
与对照组相比，CUD患者的智商显著较低，效应量较大（p <.001，d = 0.862），这是由较低的语言智商驱动的，且在调整受教育年限后仍然显著。在认知、问题性大麻使用水平或剂量之间，没有其他显著的组间效应或关联。
认可CUD的年轻人的认知改变可能特定于语言智商。未来需要开展工作来确认这些发现是否适用于整个生命周期的CUD样本，包括寻求或接受治疗且认可共病精神病理学的最脆弱的CUD个体。
