A recent issue of Biological Psychiatry titled “Cannabinoids and Psychotic Disorders” offered insights into a rapidly expanding
interdisciplinary research field. One of the many important discoveries highlighted
in that issue is the involvement of cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1R) in a synaptic retrograde signaling mechanism that controls gamma-aminobutyric acid
(GABA) and glutamate release, regulates brain oscillatory activity, and contributes
to the maturation of neural networks (
1
,
2
). Evidence of impairment in these processes in schizophrenia suggests a role for
CB1R. Postmortem investigations have yielded a complex pattern of findings, with increased
CB1R binding and decreased CB1R messenger RNA and protein levels in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia
(
2
). To investigate CB1R in vivo, three positron emission tomography (PET) studies so far have compared subjects
with schizophrenia with healthy control subjects (
3
,
4
,
5
), with the most recent one published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry (
3
). A prior report on the feasibility of CB1R imaging with the radiotracer [124I]AM281 is not discussed here because it included only one participant, a patient
with schizophrenia [cited in Ceccarini et al. (
5
)].To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- It’s all in the rhythm: The role of cannabinoids in neural oscillations and psychosis.Biol Psychiatry. 2016; 79: 568-577
- The role of endocannabinoid signaling in cortical inhibitory neuron dysfunction in schizophrenia.Biol Psychiatry. 2016; 79: 595-603
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- Quantification of cerebral cannabinoid receptors subtype 1 (CB1) in healthy subjects and schizophrenia by the novel PET radioligand [11C]OMAR.Neuroimage. 2010; 52: 1505-1513
- Increased ventral striatal CB1 receptor binding is related to negative symptoms in drug-free patients with schizophrenia.Neuroimage. 2013; 79: 304-312
- Imaging the cannabinoid CB1 receptor in humans with [11C]OMAR: Assessment of kinetic analysis methods, test-retest reproducibility, and gender differences.J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2015; 35: 1313-1322
- Rapid changes in CB1 receptor availability in cannabis dependent males after abstinence from cannabis.Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2016; 1: 60-67
- Association between cannabis and psychosis: Epidemiologic evidence.Biol Psychiatry. 2016; 79: 549-556
- Identification of distinct psychosis biotypes using brain-based biomarkers.The Am J Psychiatry. 2016; 173: 373-384
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: April 26, 2016
Accepted:
April 22,
2016
Received in revised form:
April 21,
2016
Received:
April 8,
2016
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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- Reduced Brain Cannabinoid Receptor Availability in SchizophreniaBiological PsychiatryVol. 79Issue 12
