The Impact of Cannabidiol Expectancy on Cortisol Responsivity in the Context of Acute Stress: Associations with Biological Sex
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Cannabidiol (CBD), a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid found in the cannabis plant, has gained interest for its purported stress- and anxiety-reducing effects. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Our group previously found that CBD expectancy alone resulted in lower state anxiety (vs. CBD-free expectancy) among those who strongly believed it was helpful for such purposes, in addition to influencing physiological measures (i.e., heart rate variability). Aims: Using data collected as part of this previously published larger study, we aimed to explore the extent to which CBD expectancy alone impacts cortisol in the context of a laboratory stressor. Methods: A sample of 43 healthy adults (23 female) participated in one orientation and two experimental laboratory sessions. They received the same oil (CBD-free) during both experimental sessions but were told they received CBD oil in counterbalanced order in one of their sessions. Participants then engaged in a laboratory stressor (the Maastricht Acute Stress Test; MAST) and salivary cortisol samples were collected throughout [T1: baseline; T2: 90-min postabsorption (PA); T3: poststress (0-PS); T4: 10-min poststress (10-PS); T5: 30-min poststress (30-PS)]. Linear marginal models were used for analyses. Results: Findings indicated that a physiological stress response was elicited in the context of the MAST, which is consistent with what has been reported previously. Interestingly, while cortisol levels were significantly lower in the CBD expectancy condition (vs. CBD-free) immediately following the MAST (0-PS) and 10-min later (10-PS), this effect seems to be largely driven by males, evidenced by a three-way interaction. Cortisol levels did not reliably vary across expectancy conditions at any other time point. Conclusion: Overall, these results suggest that CBD expectancy appears to blunt cortisol in anticipation of a stressor, particularly in males. Findings suggest that it is important to consider the impact of drug-related expectations when assessing CBD-related effects on stress-related processes.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".