Regular cannabis use modulates gamma activity in brain regions serving motor control

Abstract

Background:

People who regularly use cannabis exhibit altered brain dynamics during cognitive control tasks, though the impact of regular cannabis use on the neural dynamics serving motor control remains less understood.

Aims:

We sought to investigate how regular cannabis use modulates the neural dynamics serving motor control.

Methods:

Thirty-four people who regularly use cannabis (cannabis+) and 33 nonusers (cannabis−) underwent structured interviews about their substance use history and performed the Eriksen flanker task to map the neural dynamics serving motor control during high-density magnetoencephalography (MEG). The resulting neural data were transformed into the time–frequency domain to examine oscillatory activity and were imaged using a beamforming approach.

Results:

MEG sensor-level analyses revealed robust beta (16–24 Hz) and gamma oscillations (66–74 Hz) during motor planning and execution, which were imaged using a beamformer. Both responses peaked in the left primary motor cortex and voxel time series were extracted to evaluate the spontaneous and oscillatory dynamics. Our key findings indicated that the cannabis+ group exhibited weaker spontaneous gamma activity in the left primary motor cortex relative to the cannabis− group, which scaled with cannabis use and behavioral metrics. Interestingly, regular cannabis use was not associated with differences in oscillatory beta and gamma activity, and there were no group differences in spontaneous beta activity.

Conclusions:

Our findings suggest that regular cannabis use is associated with suppressed spontaneous gamma activity in the left primary motor cortex, which scales with the degree of cannabis use disorder symptomatology and is coupled to behavioral task performance.