A 2026 eLife study recorded 3,881 lateral orbitofrontal cortex units in rats and found that prior cocaine use made the OFC over-distinguish task positions that controls treated as functionally equivalent. The headline result was not gross task failure: cocaine-experienced rats still performed the odor task, but their OFC ensembles showed higher S1-vs.-S2 decoding than sucrose …
Whether alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and cannabis damage the same brain regions or different brain regions has been hard to settle in the addiction-imaging literature. A 2026 ENIGMA Addiction analysis by Georgiadis et al. — pooling 4,733 brains across 51 sites — now has an answer. Research Highlights Across 2,782 people with substance use disorder (SUD) …
A 2026 nuMoM2b Heart Health Study analysis tested whether urine-confirmed cannabis exposure 2–7 years after a first pregnancy predicted incident stage II hypertension; it did not: adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 1.05, 95% CI 0.63–1.76, with 216 of 4,079 participants developing hypertension.1 Research Highlights The headline result was null: cannabis exposure at the 2–7 year postpartum …
Studies of adolescent cannabis effects on cognition have been limited by self-report and confounding. A 2026 longitudinal study by Wade and colleagues uses the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort with both self-report and biological toxicology, separating THC and CBD effects on developing cognition.1 Research Highlights Adolescence is a critical window for cognitive maturation, with …
Ketamine and its S-enantiomer esketamine (sold as Spravato) are now established treatments for treatment-resistant depression and acute suicidality. The standard safety pitch from sponsors and clinics: at single sub-anesthetic doses, in supervised settings, addiction risk is minimal. A new case report in BJPsych Open documents a patient for whom that pitch failed catastrophically — and …
Trauma reminders trigger substance craving — but the path runs through negative emotions, not directly. A 2026 meta-analysis quantifies the link.
Global age-standardized substance-use-disorder rates fell 16.9% from 1990–2021. High-income North America rose 24%—the divergence US coverage misses.