Deborah Yurgelun-Todd1,2, Piotr Bogorodzki3,
Melissa Lopez-Larson1,2, Robert Kurjata3, John
Churchwell1, Jadwiga Rogowska4
1Brain Institute, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City, UT, United States; 2VISN 19 MIRECC, Salt Lake
City, UT, United States; 3Institute of Radioelectronics, Warsaw Technical
University, Warsaw, Poland; 4Brain Imaging Center, McLean
Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States
It
is unknown whether altered cortical thickness during adolescence is
associated with marijuana (MJ) use. This investigation used cortical-surface
based techniques to compare MJ using adolescents and healthy controls (HC).
Eighteen adolescents with DSM-IV MJ Dependence and 18 HCs had an MRI scans
using a 3T Siemens Trio scanner. Cortical reconstruction and volumetric
segmentation was performed with the Freesurfer image analysis suite. Compared
to HCs, MJ users had decreased cortical thickness in bilateral superior
frontal cortex and bilateral and left insula. Furthermore, the average
thickness of the right insula was found to negatively correlate with age of
first MJ use.
Keywords