Exploring the relationship between frequent cannabis use, belief updating under uncertainty and psychotic-like symptoms.
Frontiers in psychiatry January 1, 2024 Xinyi Liang, Maria-Mihaela Avram, Toni Gibbs-Dean et al.
Regular cannabis users show no overall difference from non-users in how they update their beliefs under uncertainty, a cognitive process linked to psychosis. Both groups correctly adjusted their confidence and learning when uncertainty changed. However, among cannabis users, those who used cannabis more frequently performed worse on the task than less frequent users. This pattern resembles the abnormal belief-updating seen in psychosis, suggesting that frequent cannabis use may share a cognitive risk marker with psychosis, even though cannabis use status alone does not impair this process.