Decreased Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates in Chronic Cannabis Users: Evidence for Striatal Cannabinoid-Dopamine Interactions

Chronic cannabis use has been shown to block long-term depression of GABA-glutamate synapses in the striatum, which is likely to reduce the extent to which endogenous cannabinoids modulate GABA- and glutamate-related neuronal activity. The current study aimed at investigating the effect of this process on striatal dopamine levels by studying the spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR), a clinical marker of dopamine level in the striatum. 25 adult regular cannabis users and 25 non-user controls matched for age, gender, race, and IQ were compared. Results show a significant reduction in EBR in chronic users as compared to non-users, suggesting an indirect detrimental effect of chronic cannabis use on striatal dopaminergic functioning. Additionally, EBR correlated negatively with years of cannabis exposure, monthly peak cannabis consumption, and lifetime cannabis consumption, pointing to a relationship between the degree of impairment of striatal dopaminergic transmission and cannabis consumption history.

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2011-11-18

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0026662PMID 22125599PMCID 3220669
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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