Archives of General Psychiatry
April 1, 2009
Sagnik Bhattacharyya, Paolo Fusar‐poli, Stefan Borgwardt et al.
250 citations
Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a psychoactive constituent of cannabis, increased psychotic symptoms, anxiety, intoxication, and sedation in healthy men with minimal prior cannabis use, while cannabidiol had no significant effect on these measures. Verbal learning performance was not significantly affected by either drug. THC altered brain activation in the parahippocampal gyrus during encoding and in the ventrostriatum during retrieval, with the ventrostriatal change directly correlating with induced psychotic symptoms. These findings suggest THC modulates mediotemporal and ventrostriatal function, potentially underlying cannabis's effects on verbal learning and psychosis.
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
March 24, 2012
Quinton Deeley, David A. Oakley, Brian Toone et al.
149 citations
Hypnosis reduces activity in the default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions active during rest and linked to self-awareness and task-independent thinking, while increasing activity in prefrontal attentional systems. Using brain imaging and subjective measures during passive visual stimulation, the authors found that the state of attentional absorption after a hypnotic induction was associated with these neural changes. Hypnosis and spontaneous conceptual thought at rest were both subjectively and neurally distinct, offering insight into the hypnotic state and its neural basis.
medRxiv Preprint Server
April 23, 2026
Giada Lombardi, Grace Blest-Hopley, Martina Maria Tarantini et al.
preprint
Regular cannabis users show altered brain responses during reward anticipation and outcome processing, but their actual task performance does not differ from non-users. Using the Monetary Incentive Delay Task, the study found that cannabis users had reduced neural activity in reward-related brain regions during anticipation of potential gains and losses, yet their reaction times and accuracy were comparable to non-users. These findings suggest that regular cannabis use is associated with changes in reward-related brain function without corresponding behavioral deficits.