Why Smokers Struggle To Quit
January 6, 2009
Just seeing someone smoke can trigger smokers to abandon their nascent efforts
to kick the habit, according to new research conducted at Duke University
Medical Center.
Brain scans taken during normal smoking activity and 24 hours after quitting
show there is a marked increase in a particular kind of brain activity when
quitters see photographs of people smoking.
The study, which appears online in Psychopharmacology, sheds important
light on why it's so hard for people to quit smoking, and why they relapse so
quickly, explains Joseph McClernon, an associate professor in the department of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.
"Only five percent of unaided quit attempts result in successful
abstinence," says McClernon. "Most smokers who try to quit return to
smoking again. We are trying to understand how that process works in the brain,
and this research brings us one step closer."
The Duke researchers used a brain-imaging tool called functional MRI to
visualize changes in brain activity that occurs when smokers quit. The smokers
were scanned once before quitting and again 24 hours after they quit. Each time
they were scanned while being shown photographs of people smoking.
"Quitting smoking dramatically increased brain activity in response to
seeing the smoking cues," says McClernon, "which seems to indicate
that quitting smoking is actually sensitizing the brain to these smoking
cues."
Even more surprising, he adds, is the area of the brain that was activated by
the cues. "We saw activation in the dorsal striatum, an area involved in
learning habits or things we do by rote, like riding a bike or brushing our
teeth. Our research shows us that when smokers encounter these cues after
quitting, it activates the area of the brain responsible for automatic
responses. That means quitting smoking may not be a matter of conscious control.
So, if we're really going to help people quit, this emphasizes the need to do
more than tell people to resist temptation. We also have to help them break that
habitual response."
New treatment options at Duke are aiming to do just that. One area of research
is focusing on the use of a nicotine patch prior to quitting smoking.
In previously published research, Jed Rose, Director of the Duke Center for
Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research and co-author of this paper as well,
showed that wearing the patch and smoking a cigarette with no nicotine proved
successful at breaking the learned behavior. "The smoking behavior is not
reinforced because the act of smoking is not leading them to get the
nicotine," Rose said. "Doing this before people actually quit helps
them break the habit so they start smoking less. We're seeing people quit longer
this way."
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Source: Debbe Geiger
Duke
University Medical Center
Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com
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