Cannabinoids in the Brain Prevent Addiction After Childhood Maltreatment

People who had not developed an addiction despite childhood maltreatment may be linked to a more adaptive way of reacting to social information in the brain.

The increased amount of cannabinoid substances in the brain may protect against developing addiction in individuals previously exposed to childhood maltreatment. The brains of those who had not developed an addiction following childhood maltreatment seem to process emotion-related social signals better.

Childhood maltreatment has long been suspected to increase the risk of developing a drug or alcohol addiction later in life. Researchers have previously shown that this risk is three times higher if you have been exposed to childhood maltreatment compared with if you have not, even when accounting for confounds from genetics and other familial factors.

Resilience to Substance Use Disorder Following Childhood Maltreatment

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‘Understanding the development of resilience to substance use disorders (SUD) after exposure to Childhood maltreatment is important for improving intervention.’

Based on this, we and other researchers have had a theory that if affected in childhood, the function of the brain’s distress systems is altered and that this may contribute to addiction risk in adulthood.

Endocannabinoids are the body’s cannabis-like substances and play an important part in regulating reactions to stress and discomfort. Recent research published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry suggests that this endogenous system may function as a stress buffer.

Researchers investigated possible mechanisms behind susceptibility or resilience to developing substance use disorder later in life after exposure to childhood maltreatment. One difficulty in research is that people who develop problems later in life tend to overreport negative life experiences when questioned about earlier events.

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They, therefore, used psychiatric care registers of children and young people having been treated for traumatic childhood experiences to find study participants with objectively and prospectively documented exposure.

Endocannabinoid Function Linked to Emotion Regulation in Addiction

The study included about 100 young adults divided into four equal-sized groups: individuals that had been exposed to childhood maltreatment and had developed an addiction, individuals that had been exposed but had not, individuals that had not been exposed but had developed an addiction, and individuals who had neither been exposed nor developed an addiction.

Then measured endocannabinoid levels in participants’ blood and carried out several experiments to test stress reactions. The participants’ brains were also scanned using magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, while their reactions to social stimuli were tested.

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It turned out that one group stood out compared to the other three: the group that had experienced childhood maltreatment but had not later developed an addiction. The researchers refer to this group as ‛resilient’. In comparison with the other groups.

This group showed the increased function of the endocannabinoid system as well as different brain activity. Surprisingly, the resilient group differed most from the control group, which had not been exposed to childhood maltreatment, nor had any addictions.

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Faced with emotional and social stimuli, the resilient group showed higher activity in three areas of the brain. Two of these areas are part of a brain network that focuses attention and cognitive abilities on what is important now and modifies individuals’ behavior according to the situation at hand.

The third area of the brain is in the frontal lobe and is associated with regulating emotions. This area communicates extensively with other areas in the brain that process emotions. In comparison with other animals, humans have a well-developed frontal lobe that regulates impulses and emotions, for instance by suppressing fear impulses in situations where fear is not relevant.

A question this discovery raises is whether the resilient group had a high endocannabinoid system function from the outset, or whether they were better able to activate the system in response to stress, thereby avoiding long-term consequences of childhood maltreatment. Because of its cross-section nature, this is not possible to determine from the present study.

Source-Eurekalert