Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 31, 2026
Brain Morphology of Cannabis Users With or Without Psychosis: A Pilot MRI Study
Published on: August 18, 2020
Exploring fMRI-neurofeedback to reduce craving-related brain activity in people with cannabis use disorder: A
Ethan Murphy1, Govinda Poudel2, Amir Hossein Dakhili1
1Neuroscience of Addiction and Mental Health Program, Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre, School of Behavioural & Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Science, Australian Catholic University, Victoria, Australia.
Introduction:
Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) can come with intense cravings, which can trigger compulsive use/relapse, underscored by anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) hyperactivity during cannabis cue-reactivity functional neuroimaging (fMRI) tasks. ACC activity can be reduced during real-time fMRI-based neurofeedback (fMRI-neurofeedback) in participants who use substances other than cannabis, but remains untested in CUD. We investigated the feasibility of fMRI-neurofeedback to reduce ACC activity and subjective craving in 10 participants with moderate-to-severe CUD.
Methods And Materials:
A cue-reactivity fMRI task identified participants' voxels-of-interest (VOI) within the ACC (ACCVOI). During two identical runs of 7 Tesla fMRI-neurofeedback, participants were instructed to use self-selected strategies to reduce ACCVOI activity while receiving real-time feedback via a digital craving bar (ACCVOI activity) when viewing cannabis images (down-regulation), and to simply look at neutral images (non-regulation). We examined the change in real-time percentage signal change (PSC) of the ACCVOI during down-regulation versus non-regulation, and post-hoc (offline) whole-brain activation changes.
Results:
Analysis of real-time data revealed that down-regulation versus non-regulation was associated with reductions in ACCVOI PSC (p < 0.05). Further, whole-brain analysis reported down-regulation versus non-regulation was associated with lower activity in the ACC, posterior insula, and hippocampus; and greater activity in the anterior insula and middle frontal gyrus (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). Subjective craving did not change pre-to-post fMRI-neurofeedback and did not correlate with ACCVOI PSC or whole-brain brain activity (p > 0.05).
Conclusion:
fMRI-neurofeedback may reduce the activity of regions associated with craving in CUD. This effect appeared to be dissociable from subjective craving. These observations need to be confirmed in larger samples with placebo-controlled conditions.
