Neurobehavioral responses to legal cannabis advertisements in youth and adults
Poster No:
691
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Justine Chen1, Nathan Chabin2, Ruizhe Zhang1, Jalen Grayson1, Alisa Padon3, Lynn Silver3, Dara Ghahremani1
Institutions:
1UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2Pitzer College, Pomona, CA, 3Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Exposure to marketing for legal substances has a significant impact on subsequent substance use, with underage youth especially susceptible to influence. Guidelines for regulating cannabis advertisements are needed to protect underage youth in locations where cannabis is legal. Identifying key features appealing to youth is an important step in specifying guidelines. The Content Appealing to Youth (CAY) index, developed for alcohol and tobacco ads (Padon et al., 2017, 2018), indicated key features that are appealing to youth. We sought to modify the CAY index for cannabis and to evaluate it for neural responses and self-reported liking of cannabis ads and use, with a broad goal of providing evidence to inform cannabis marketing policy. We hypothesized that, compared to adults, youth would show greater differentiation in neural responses to ads with high vs. low CAY indices in regions responsive to reward and arousal (e.g., ventral striatum and amygdala, respectively).
Methods:
After modifying the CAY index using surveys and focus groups, we presented cannabis ads to youth and adults (N=63; 35 female; age range: 16-36 years old; M=24.4, SD=6.3) during fMRI scanning. We prepared non-cannabis control ads that closely matched cannabis ads on appearance. After each ad presentation (20 s), participants rated how much they liked the ad before presentation of the next trial (30 cannabis trials, 30 control trials; mixed event-related/blocked design). After the scan, participants viewed each cannabis ad again and indicated how much it made them want to use cannabis. Twenty-three of 37 participants scanned used cannabis regularly (>3x/week). We first compared brain responses to cannabis and control ads to determine brain activation specific to cannabis content. Then, we compared responses to cannabis ads with low and high CAY content across age. We focused on the ventral striatum and amygdala as a priori regions of interest, but exploratory whole-brain analyses were also conducted. We also examined correlations of brain activation with ad liking and wanting to use cannabis. Preprocessing and whole-brain voxel-wise univariate statistics were conducted (FSL, voxel height: Z>3.1, cluster: P<0.05; FLAME1, outlier removal).
Results:
Across age, high CAY ads elicited greater liking and the desire to use cannabis vs. low CAY ads (Ps<0.0001). Compared to control ads, cannabis ads elicited greater activation in the amygdala and ventral striatum (Ps<0.0001) as well as the precuneus and posterior cingulate in whole-brain analyses. Amygdala and ventral striatum did not differentiate between high and low CAY ads, but whole-brain analyses showed that bilateral occipito-temporal activation did, with activation positively correlated with wanting to use cannabis. The right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG) showed a negative relationship between age and RIFG for high CAY ads and no relationship for low CAY ads (significant interaction). No effects of regular cannabis use were found in any analyses.
·Figure 1. Task trial structure.
·Figure 2. Whole-brain voxel-wise results. (Scatter plots of extracted parameter estimates are shown to illustrate distribution of data points and direction of interaction effects).
Conclusions:
These preliminary results indicate that both youth and adults like ads with content previously shown to be appealing to youth, and both are also more likely to want to use cannabis after viewing an ad that they like. Amygdala and ventral striatum are sensitive to whether ads contain cannabis or not, but do not distinguish by content appealing to youth. Thus, high youth appeal may not be explained by reward and arousal mechanisms (as indexed by these brain regions). Occipito-temporal CAY-sensitivity may be a result of attention-related gain in higher order visual areas in response to high CAY ads. RIFG appears to be sensitive to high/low appeal differentially in youth and adults, suggesting a potential role of cognitive control when youth view appealing cannabis ads. Concerning policy implications, our results suggest that ads with features that are high on the CAY index should be restricted to media to which youth will be minimally exposed.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Reward and Punishment 2
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Decision Making
Keywords:
Addictions
Cognition
Development
FUNCTIONAL MRI
NORMAL HUMAN
PEDIATRIC
Psychiatric
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Padon AA, Rimal RN, DeJong W, Siegel M, Jernigan D. Assessing Youth-Appealing Content in Alcohol Advertisements: Application of a Content Appealing to Youth (CAY) Index. Health communication. 2018;33(2):164-73. Epub 2016/12/17. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2016.1250331.