When AI can create apps from simple prompts, many developers are left wondering what to do with their time.
The tech’s ability to generate practically anything in the digital domain has triggered a number of questions about how these capabilities will change the way tech workers, well … work. Coding tools like Claude Code have entirely automated something that once required a fleet of eager college grads to complete.
The result? Developers are becoming managers, rather than creators. And executives are eating it up:
Canva’s CTO Jesal Gadhia told Business Insiderthat most of the company’s senior engineers spend their time reviewing AI-generated code, rather than writing it themselves. As a result, they’ve produced an “unprecedented amount of code” in the last 12 months.
Meanwhile, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström said in the company’s recent earnings call that its most talented developers haven’t handwritten “a single line of code since December.”
And Dan Cox, the CTO of Axios, said that the company used AI agents to complete a project in 37 minutes that took one of its best engineers three weeks to complete the previous year.
While this might be fine for senior developers, the question remains of how this will impact the green coders who are just entering the workforce, especially amid the plethora of mixed signals on how AI is impacting the job market.
Some estimates paint a bleak picture: According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkanalyzing the degrees with the highest unemployment rate, computer engineering and computer science ranked in the top five, at 7.8% and 7%, respectively.
Others, however, point to AI transforming certain jobs, rather than completely killing them. A Gartner study, for instance, said that 50% of the workers laid off as a result of AI will be rehired to do similar work. It’s a sentiment that IBM is taking into its own hiring practices as it plans to triple entry-level headcount, but shift focus away from technical tasks that AI can do to instead have these staffers focus on person-to-person jobs that need human skills.
Our Deeper View
An argument can be made that creation requires humanity. Art, music, literature: these are things that are born as a result of channeling the human experience into an artistic medium so that we can relate to one another. But that argument is a little more difficult to make for technical skills like coding. As these systems become more capable of doing technical work, human creation might become more valuable. As Daniela Amodei said in a recent interview with ABC News: “In a world where AI is very smart and capable of doing so many things, the things that make us human will become much more important.”
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Made in the EU, Dropped on Kyiv: How European Parts Are Enabling Russia’s Winter Drone War
Investigation
The workhorse of Russia’s drone fleet — responsible for crippling Ukraine’s energy grid and triggering a humanitarian crisis — is built with EU technology. Despite tightening sanctions, parts for the Geran-2 are still flowing into Russia with ease.
It’s freezing in Tetiana Kavinova’s apartment in the eastern part of Kyiv, a sprawling expanse of residential districts locals call the Left Bank. Each night, like hundreds of other buildings in the Ukrainian capital, hers descends into icy darkness. Kavinova’s electricity and heating has not worked reliably since Russian kamikaze drones started repeatedly hitting the city’s power plants in early January.
This campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is Moscow’s most recent attempt to weaponize the winter cold. Over a million Ukrainians have endured weeks without power, water, or heat.
“I wish it was evening so I could fall asleep and forget,” Kavinova says to a reporter from OCCRP’s local partner, the Kyiv Independent. “Yesterday, I was lying in bed, thinking about putting on gloves. You lie under two or three blankets and don’t get up.”
Credit: Alisa Yurchenko/The Kyiv Independent
Tetiana Kavinova in her Kyiv apartment.
But it’s not only Russia to blame for this man-made humanitarian crisis. Despite EU sanctions that prohibit direct exports, hundreds of components produced by European companies are still ending up in its drones.
Among these is the Geran-2, a cheap model that can deliver its deadly payload across thousands of kilometers. Striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure and other civilian targets by the hundreds, night after night, these drones are produced at an industrial scale that requires a steady supply of foreign parts.
By dissecting the charred remains of downed Geran-2 drones, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has been able to map out the anatomy of this model and the components that go into it. Though some are published on the agency’s specialized website, reporters have obtained exclusive documents that provide a fuller picture of which foreign parts are enabling Russia’s campaign of winter terror.
The total number of components is in the hundreds, of which only a few dozen are of Russian origin. Many are produced by companies from the United States and China, but over a hundred are produced by about 20 European firms.The items include microchips, receivers, transistors, diodes, antennas, and a fuel pump.
Credit: James O’Brien
European components found in the Geran-2 drone by HUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence. Click to enlarge.
The European Union forbids the direct export of many of these items to Russia. But trade data obtained from the Import Genius platform shows 672 shipments of sanctioned components produced by these European firms being sent to the country between January 2024 and March 2025. The shipments originated from 178 companies, mostly in China and Hong Kong.
There is no indication that any of the European manufacturers named in this story violated any legislation or had anything to do with these sales. But these findings illustrate the extent to which the steadily-tightening EU sanctions regime has failed to restrict Russia’s ability to manufacture drones with foreign components.
About the Collaboration
This investigation was led by the Belgian newspaper De Tijd along with OCCRP, the Kyiv Independent, Paper Trail Media, the Irish Times, Infolibre, and The Times.
In a statement to reporters, David O’Sullivan, the EU’s Chief Sanctions Envoy, wrote that tackling sanctions circumvention is a “key priority” for the European Union and that recent sanctions packages have “added tools” to support member states to do so.
“We will not ignore cases of our sanctions being systematically circumvented through the jurisdictions of third countries,” he wrote. “This is why, in my role as Sanctions Envoy, I have been actively engaged in outreach with third countries to prevent that their jurisdiction would be used for the sale, supply, transfer or export to Russia of these specific high-risk goods of EU origin.”
The European Manufacturers
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, provided reporters with images of hundreds of components from downed Geran-2 drones, along with their analysis of their manufacturers. Using this data, reporters counted 19 companies in eight European countries that appear to produce the parts:
Spain: Pierburg (part of the German Rheinmetall Group)
United Kingdom: AEL Crystals, Dialog Semiconductor (a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation), Future Technology Devices International, Golledge Electronics
Switzerland: ST Microelectronics, u-blox, Axsem
Poland: Complex Automotive Bearings
On being provided with the component images, two of the companies — REMA Group and Diotec Semiconductor — said the components were not theirs.
Reporters found no evidence that any of these companies have violated sanctions law or directly exported anything to Russia. Trade data shows that the parts are exported to Russia by companies in China, Hong Kong, and other non-EU states. The data available to reporters does not contain any shipments of sanctioned components produced by several of the companies: AMS Osram Group, Robert Bosch, REMA Group, Pierburg SA, and Complex Automotive Bearings.
Others said that they have not delivered any products to Russia since the 2022 invasion and that they comply with sanctions law. They cited the challenge of monitoring complex global supply chains and acknowledged that their parts can reach Russia through third countries or non-authorized distributors without their knowledge.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, there were only nine days in all of 2025 when Ukraine was not struck by Geran-2 drones. A total of 34,000 targeted the country over the course of the year, making up more than half of all drone attacks.
These swarms of drones, often hundreds at once, are a bid to confuse and weaken Ukrainian air defenses, often allowing more destructive missiles to pass through the gaps. The United Nations has documented 682 civilian casualties from long-range weapons in 2025 alone.
Credit: Jose Colon/Anadolu/Anadolu via AFP
The aftermath of Geran-2 drone strikes in a residential area of Sloviansk, Ukraine, on November 27, 2025.
In Ukraine, the Geran-2 is universally known as the “Shahed,” a reference to its Iranian origin. Today, most are produced in a factory in the Russian republic of Tatarstan. Reportedly costing just $20,000 to $50,000 apiece, their affordability, low-altitude flight profile, and self-destructive design has earned them the nickname “the poor man’s cruise missile.”
“The Shahed is the only drone that can strike at a strategic depth of up to 2,500 kilometers,” says Ivan Kirichevsky, a serving member of the Ukrainian military and a weapons expert at Defense Express, a Kyiv-based think tank. “If we consider literally all known drones of a similar class in the world — meaning long-range kamikaze drones — the Shahed and its derivatives are truly the best.”
The Geran-2 has also been cited as a strategic concern for the European Union. Officials have pointed to repeated violations of Romanian airspace, and the drone’s success at overwhelming air defenses in Ukraine, as signs of a growing threat and a key driver behind new counter-drone initiatives.
Credit: Jose Colon/Anadolu/Anadolu via AFP
A secondary school destroyed in a Geran-2 attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on October 11, 2025.
In an attempt to cripple Russian weapons production, the European Commission banned all export of so-called “dual-use goods” to Russia and Belarus in 2022. This definition covers products, software, or technologies that are designed for commercial applications but may also be used for military purposes. The United Kingdom and Switzerland, which are not EU members, implemented similar restrictions.
As the war continued, EU sanctions tightened, broadening restrictions and starting to include legal entities in third-country re-export hubs that were suspected of enabling circumvention. The European Commission added a new layer of legal accountability in 2024, requiring EU firms to include a “no re-export to Russia” clause in contracts with foreign clients.
“Sanctions work,” said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukraine’s Sanctions Commissioner under President Zelenskyy. “Take the example of cruise missiles. Russia would love to scale up production, but they couldn’t. Why couldn’t they? Because they couldn’t get the required Western parts. Why couldn’t they get that? Because of sanctions.”
“Without Western technologies,” Vlasiuk says, “Russia would not be able to produce the Geran-2.”
Global Supply Chains
To see how sanctioned items still end up in Geran-2 drones, reporters traced the path of one of their key components — a GNSS receiver. This device, which is also used to enable GPS systems in consumer devices like smartphones, provides drones with precise positioning, velocity, and time data derived from satellite signals.
For the Geran-2, this part is manufactured by u-blox, a Swiss firm that specializes in radio modules and positioning products.
In a statement on its website, the company “strongly condemns” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and notes that it stopped all sales to Russia, Belarus, and occupied Ukrainian territories immediately after the invasion. It also says that it no longer sells to the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, which have a free trade agreement with Russia, and has a “strict company policy” not to allow its products to be used in military drones.
Jingzhou, China: Among the foreign companies that have shipped u-blox components to Russia is Yusha Group Co Ltd, a trading firm in the Chinese city of Jingzhou. The company was sanctioned as part of the EU’s 17th sanctions package, passed in May 2025. It did not respond to a request for comment.
St. Petersburg, Russia: The parts were imported by Norkap LLC, registered as an industrial equipment wholesaler. It did not respond to a request for comment.
Kyiv, Ukraine: U-blox components, including its GNSS receiver, were found by Ukrainian military intelligence in a downed Geran-2 drone.Credit: Ivan Kirichevsky
U-blox’s statement offers several possible explanations for how its components ended up in Russian drones: “Either these components were purchased before sanctions were in place or excess inventory was sold on by customers to brokers in countries not applying sanctions against Russia and then shipped into Russia; or smuggled into Russia; or they have been de-mounted from an end product and re-integrated into Russian drones.”
Other western chipmakers emphasize the complexity of global supply chains.
Nearly 300 shipments of sanctioned components manufactured by Nexperia, a Dutch semiconductor manufacturer, appear in trade data obtained by reporters. In response to previous reporting, the company released a statement in 2024 condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and stating that it “does not sell to Russia even through distributors.”
In an email to reporters, a spokesperson for the company, Hannes van Raemdonck, said he “shared the frustration” that “despite all efforts, products still end up where they are not supposed to.”
The tiny size of the company’s chips mean that “it is not technically feasible to add tracking or identification features,” van Raemdonck wrote. These chips, he explained, are produced in very high volumes of millions of units and are used in everyday consumer products like washing machines, refrigerators, and cars.
“We cannot determine how components may have reached Russia. Global semiconductor supply chains are complex, and diversion activities can happen without the manufacturer’s knowledge or involvement,” van Raemdonck said. “We work with authorities and NGOs to help stop such activities.”
The EU’s 20th sanctions package, which is currently being debated in Brussels, represents the next move in the bloc’s strategy to cripple Russia’s war economy.
“It’s a game of whack-a-mole,” says Alex Prezanti, a UK barrister, specialist in sanctions and anti-corruption, and co-founder of the State Capture Accountability Project. “You can keep chasing corporate entities, but you’re always a step behind, because they can open ten new companies every day.”
In any new sanctions package, he said, the EU would hesitate to tighten restrictions on China “because this would be tantamount to a trade war.”
Prezanti described the requirement for EU companies to include a “no re-export to Russia” clause in their contracts as having “limited impact” because it can easily be circumvented through intermediary resellers, which are “quite often just paper companies.”
While policymakers battle it out in Brussels, the drones keep raining down on Ukrainian cities. On the night of February 11, a Geran-2 drone struck a residential building in Kharkiv, killing a man and his three young children and injuring his pregnant wife.
Back in Kyiv, sanctions commissioner Vlasiuk says “the supply chains have been becoming more difficult, like multi-chains, third countries enablers, payment via cryptocurrencies.”
Credit: Nick Allard/The Kyiv Independent
Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian President’s Commissioner for Sanctions Policy, showing a part of the fuselage of a recovered Geran-2 drone.
“We think the manufacturers, plus the big distributors they work with, should be doing more,” he says. “‘Well we sell a lot of these tiny parts, they are dual use, we cannot control thousands of tiny cheap parts’ — that is not a good answer anymore. I mean, it has been almost four years, and that answer does not cut it anymore.”
Meanwhile, on the Left Bank of the city, Tetiana Kavinova is still freezing in the icy cold of her apartment.
Her electricity came back for a few days, only for the heating to suddenly stop working again.
“After power engineers repair damage, Russia just launches a new strike,” she says. “I thought the beginning of the war was terrible. But, now I think that probably it was morally easier than now.”
Research and data expertise was provided by OCCRP’s Research & Data Team.
February 18, 2026
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At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, entrepreneur and Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt makes the case that the internet, and the AI systems rapidly reshaping it, must be redesigned to serve people, not platforms.
At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, entrepreneur and Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt makes the case that the internet, and the AI systems rapidly reshaping it, must be redesigned to serve people, not platforms.
McCourt argues that today’s tech ecosystem is built on centralized, surveillance-driven incentives that clash with democratic values. As the world shifts from an app-based web to an “agentic” one powered by AI agents, he says we’re at a rare moment to rethink the architecture of the internet itself.
What would it mean to own your digital data? Could sovereign AI agents act as fiduciaries for individuals? And can innovation and democracy coexist in the next era of technology?
This conversation is presented by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical forces reshaping our world.
An F/A-18E Super Hornet prepares to launch from the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea late last month. Photo: Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Daniel Kimmelman/U.S. Navy
The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon, Axios’ Barak Ravid writes.
Why it matters: A U.S. military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weekslong campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month’s pinpoint operation in Venezuela, sources say.
The sources noted it would likely be a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign that’s much broader in scope — and more existential for the regime — than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June, which the U.S. eventually joined to take out Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
Such a war would have a dramatic influence on the entire region, and major implications for the remaining three years of the Trump presidency.
With the attention of Congress and the public otherwise occupied, there has been little public debate about what could be the most consequential U.S. military intervention in the Middle East in at least a decade.
The big picture: Trump came close to striking Iran in early January over the killing of thousands of protesters by the regime.
Instead, the administration shifted to a two-track approach: nuclear talks paired with a massive military buildup.
By delaying and bringing so much force to bear, Trump has raised expectations for what an operation will look like if a deal can’t be reached.
And right now, a deal doesn’t look likely.
Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for three hours in Geneva yesterday.
While both sides said the talks “made progress,” the gaps are wide, and U.S. officials aren’t optimistic about closing them.
Vice President Vance told Fox News the talks “went well” in some ways, but “in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.
“Vance made it clear that while Trump wants a deal, he could determine that diplomacy has “reached its natural end.”A Pentagon photo of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jesse Monford/U.S. Navy
Zoom in: Trump’s armada has grown to include two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets and multiple air defense systems. Some of that firepower is still on its way.
More than 150 U.S. military cargo flights have moved weapons systems and ammunition to the Middle East.
In the past 24 hours, another 50 fighter jets — F-35s, F-22s and F-16s — headed to the region.
Between the lines: Trump’s military and rhetorical buildups make it hard for him to back down without major concessions from Iran on its nuclear program.
It’s not in Trump’s nature, and his advisers don’t view the deployment of all that hardware as a bluff.
With Trump, anything can happen. But all signs point to him pulling the trigger if talks fail.Share this story.
If someone is guilty of a heinous violent crime and is able to plead insanity, they should go to an asylum, not be released to murder or rape innocent people
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Elon Musk calls to bring back insane asylums in the United States.
Heres the “Evidence” Epstein was a “Russian agent”
His Girlfriend was the daughter of a Mossad agent, Best friends with Israel’s top lawyer, Close with Former Israeli Prime Minister, Met with Current Israeli Prime Minister, Israeli Spy Stayed at His House, Invited to Bring His “Girls” to Israel, Fled to Israel to Avoid Charges, Pictured in an IDF Shirt, Funded by Pro-Israel Billionaires, Worked for the Rothschilds, Donated to Pro-Israel Groups, Ran Wexner’s “Pro-Israel” Projects, Backed Israeli Settlements, Called Non-Jews “Goyim” Conclusive proof.
“I have read many books but forgot most of them. What remains is a kind of mood, a vague memory of the feeling rather than the facts.” George Orwell #quote
Summary: While recent research has suggested potential neuroprotective benefits for older adults, a new study, the largest brain imaging study of its kind, highlights a significant downside for young adults. Examining over 1,000 participants aged 22 to 36, researchers found that heavy cannabis use (defined as 1,000+ lifetime uses) is linked to reduced brain activity in regions critical for decision-making and attention.
Specifically, 63% of heavy lifetime users and 68% of recent users showed diminished neural response during working memory tasks.These findings suggest that while cannabis effects may vary across a lifespan, frequent use during early adulthood can impair the “mental workspace” needed to retain and manipulate information for everyday problem-solving.
Key Facts
The Study Scope: This is the largest study to use functional MRI (fMRI) to examine how cannabis specifically impacts the neural networks involved in working memory.
Working Memory Deficit: Working memory—the ability to hold and use information (like following multi-step directions)—was the only cognitive domain out of seven tested to show a statistically significant decline.
Brain Activity Reduction: Heavy users showed lower activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula, hubs responsible for executive control and emotional processing.
The 1,000-Use Threshold: The most pronounced impairments were observed in “heavy users” who had consumed cannabis more than 1,000 times in their lifetime.
Reversibility Potential: Preliminary data suggest that abstaining from use before a cognitive task could help improve performance, offering hope for recovery through behavioral changes.
Source: University of Colorado
A new study published today in JAMA Network Open explores the effects of both recent and lifetime cannabis use on brain function during cognitive tasks.
The study, the largest of its kind ever to be completed, examined the effects of cannabis use on over 1,000 young adults aged 22 to 36 using brain imaging technology. The researchers found that 63% of heavy lifetime cannabis users exhibited reduced brain activity during a working memory task, while 68% of recent users also demonstrated a similar impact.
This decline in brain activity was associated with worse performance on working memory – the ability to retain and use information to perform tasks. For example, working memory allows a person to follow instructions they’ve just been given or to mentally visualize and manipulate information, like solving a math problem.
‘Make informed decisions’
“As cannabis use continues to grow globally, studying its effects on human health has become increasingly important. By doing so, we can provide a well-rounded understanding of both the benefits and risks of cannabis use, empowering people to make informed decisions and fully comprehend the potential consequences,” said the study’s first author Joshua Gowin, PhD, assistant professor of radiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
In the study, heavy users are considered young adults who’ve used cannabis more than 1000 times over their lifetime. Whereas, using 10 to 999 times was considered a moderate user and less than 10 times was considered a nonuser.
The researchers then studied the neural response of participants during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) session and gave them seven cognitive tasks to complete. The tasks tested working memory, reward, emotion, language, motor skills – such as tapping a finger to map brain control, relational assessment and theory of mind.
Statistically significant effect on brain function
The researchers found that cannabis had a statistically significant effect on brain function during working memory tasks, meaning the observed impact is very unlikely to be due to random chance. This effect was seen in both recent and lifetime cannabis users. The impact was less significant for the other tasks.
“We applied the highest standards to our research, setting rigorous thresholds for statistical significance across all seven cognitive function tests. To minimize the risk of false positives, we employed false discovery rate (FDR) correction. While some of the other tasks indicated potential cognitive impairment, only the working memory task showed a statistically significant impact,” adds Gowin.
During working memory tasks, the researchers found heavy cannabis use appeared to reduce brain activity in certain areas of the brain (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and anterior insula). These regions of the brain are involved in important cognitive functions such as decision-making, memory, attention and emotional processing.
However, Gowin mentions their research also suggests that abstaining from using cannabis before doing a cognitive task could help to improve performance. “People need to be aware of their relationship with cannabis since abstaining cold turkey could disrupt their cognition as well. For example, heavy users may need to be more cautious,” Gowin says.
He adds, “There are a lot of questions we still need answers to regarding how cannabis impacts the brain. Large, long-term studies are needed next to understand whether cannabis use directly changes brain function, how long these effects last and the impact on different age groups.”
Key Questions Answered:
Q: What exactly is “working memory”?
A: Think of it as your brain’s “sticky note.” It’s the ability to hold a thought while you’re doing something else—like remembering the first half of a sentence while you finish reading the second, or keeping a phone number in your head while you look for a pen.
Q: Why is this study different from the one about older adults?
A: Context is everything. This study focused on young adults (22–36). The brain is still highly plastic in this age range, and frequent use may “blunt” the activity of executive networks. In older adults, the same substance might interact differently with a brain that is already facing age-related decline.
Q: Is the damage permanent?
A: The study noted that abstaining before tasks might improve performance, which suggests the impact is functional (how the brain works) rather than purely structural (the brain’s physical shape). More long-term research is needed to see how long it takes for the brain to “re-calibrate” after quitting.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this memory and cannabis research news
Author: Julia Milzer Source: University of Colorado Contact: Julia Milzer – University of Colorado Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Brain Function Outcomes of Recent and Lifetime Cannabis Use” by Joshua L. Gowin, Jarrod M. Ellingson, Hollis C. Karoly, Peter Manza, J. Megan Ross, Matthew E. Sloan, Jody L. Tanabe, and Nora D. Volkow. JAMA Network Open DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.57069
Abstract
Brain Function Outcomes of Recent and Lifetime Cannabis Use
Importance
Cannabis use has increased globally, but its effects on brain function are not fully known, highlighting the need to better determine recent and long-term brain activation outcomes of cannabis use.
Objective
To examine the association of lifetime history of heavy cannabis use and recent cannabis use with brain activation across a range of brain functions in a large sample of young adults in the US.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This cross-sectional study used data (2017 release) from the Human Connectome Project (collected between August 2012 and 2015). Young adults (aged 22-36 years) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), urine toxicology, and cannabis use data were included in the analysis. Data were analyzed from January 31 to July 30, 2024.
Exposures
History of heavy cannabis use was assessed using the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism, with variables for lifetime history and diagnosis of cannabis dependence. Individuals were grouped as heavy lifetime cannabis users if they had greater than 1000 uses, as moderate users if they had 10 to 999 uses, and as nonusers if they had fewer than 10 uses.
Participants provided urine samples on the day of scanning to assess recent use. Diagnosis of cannabis dependence (per Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria) was also included.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Brain activation was assessed during each of the 7 tasks administered during the functional MRI session (working memory, reward, emotion, language, motor, relational assessment, and theory of mind). Mean activation from regions associated with the primary contrast for each task was used.
The primary analysis was a linear mixed-effects regression model (one model per task) examining the association of lifetime cannabis and recent cannabis use on the mean brain activation value.
Results
The sample comprised 1003 adults (mean [SD] age, 28.7 [3.7] years; 470 men [46.9%] and 533 women [53.1%]). A total of 63 participants were Asian (6.3%), 137 were Black (13.7%), and 762 were White (76.0%). For lifetime history criteria, 88 participants (8.8%) were classified as heavy cannabis users, 179 (17.8%) as moderate users, and 736 (73.4%) as nonusers. Heavy lifetime use (Cohen d = −0.28 [95% CI, −0.50 to −0.06]; false discovery rate corrected P = .02) was associated with lower activation on the working memory task.
Regions associated with a history of heavy use included the anterior insula, medial prefrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Recent cannabis use was associated with poorer performance and lower brain activation in the working memory and motor tasks, but the associations between recent use and brain activation did not survive false discovery rate correction. No other tasks were associated with lifetime history of heavy use, recent use, or dependence diagnosis.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this study of young adults, lifetime history of heavy cannabis use was associated with lower brain activation during a working memory task. These findings identify negative outcomes associated with heavy lifetime cannabis use and working memory in healthy young adults that may be long lasting.
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Credit: Ivan Kirichevsky
A Pentagon photo of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jesse Monford/U.S. Navy
canisgallicus 