Increased Mesostriatal Intrinsic Connectivity Associated With Cue Exposure in Adult Cannabis Users: Preliminary Findings.
Addiction biology August 1, 2025 Natalia M Kleinhans, Garth E Terry, Dahyeon Kang et al.
Exposure to multimodal cannabis cues (visual and olfactory) alters resting-state functional connectivity between the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the striatum in regular cannabis users. In a preliminary fMRI study of 28 regular cannabis users and 26 controls, no group differences in VTA-striatal connectivity were observed at baseline. After cue exposure, cannabis users showed significantly greater VTA-caudate connectivity than controls. Among cannabis users, baseline craving positively correlated with VTA-striatal connectivity both before and after cue exposure. These findings suggest a neural mechanism by which drug cues may increase relapse vulnerability even after cues are removed.