REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Neuroimaging
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1644105
Cannabis use in adolescence and young adulthood and its effects on brain structure and function: a scoping review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
- 2Nova Scotia Health Authority, Halifax, Canada
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Introduction: 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.Methods: 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.Results: 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, 5 found 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.
Keywords: Cannabis, adolescence, young adulthood, Brain, Neuroimaging
Received: 09 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nosko, Crocker, Hambly Lapointe and Tibbo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joey Nosko, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.