Cannabis use in adolescence and young adulthood and its effects on brain structure and function: a scoping review

Adolescence and young adulthood are simultaneously periods of significant brain development and the ages in which people often initiate cannabis use. This has led to significant interest in researching the effects that cannabis use in this period might have on the brains of users. This scoping review aims to summarize existing neuroimaging research on the effect of cannabis use in adolescence and/or young adulthood (ages 14-25) on brain structure, function, and metabolite concentrations.

Following scoping review methodology, databases containing neuroimaging studies assessing the effects of cannabis use between the ages of 14 and 25 on brain structure, function, and metabolite concentrations were searched.

Our search yielded 3901 sources, of which 99 met inclusion criteria. The majority of included papers (84/99) found differences in the brain structure, function, and/or metabolite concentrations of adolescent/young adult cannabis users compared to non-using controls. Fewer studies explicitly assessed sex/gender differences, with 5 finding that sex/gender influenced the effect of cannabis use on the brain.

Based on the findings of this review, there is considerable evidence to suggest that cannabis use in adolescence/young adulthood causes changes in the brains of users, however, the low quality of relevant research and scarcity of long term follow up studies, in addition to the heterogeneity of the existing research suggests that more work needs to be done to understand this relationship.