Psychology Commons^™

Cannabis Use And Affective Processing: A Brain Structure Analysis, Kristin E. Maple

Theses and Dissertations

Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug amongst adolescents and young adults in the United States. Previously, cannabis and its components have been associated with differences in affective processing and neural functioning. Participants (ages 16-25) were cannabis users and non-users excluded for psychiatric disorders, major medical conditions, and excessive other drug use. A series of multiple regressions examined whether past year cannabis use and cannabis x gender predicted measures of emotional face processing (using the PennCNP affective battery) as well as volumes in bilateral prefrontal, temporal, limbic, and cerebellar regions, as well as frontolimbic white matter tracts. Subsequently, Pearson …