High Before Hello: Cannabis and the Developing Brain

Cannabis use during pregnancy is becoming increasingly common, yet many questions remain about its effects on developing offspring. Sophia Rogers, a Ph.D. candidate in Biopsychology at UC Davis, wants to help answer them.

In this talk, Sophia walks through what researchers have learned from both human studies and animal models, and why answering these questions is more complicated than it might seem. She shares findings from her own research using prairie voles, a uniquely social rodent model, to investigate how prenatal THC exposure shapes behavior and brain development later in life.

Prairie voles are especially useful here. Their social bonding behavior closely mirrors aspects of human relationships, making them a powerful tool for studying developmental outcomes that are otherwise hard to observe.

Whether you're curious about cannabis, pregnancy, or simply how scientists study tricky questions like this one, this talk will separate what we know from what we still have to discover.