Brain Scans Reveal Unconcious Desire To Smoke

dealing with the unconscious habitual response

Brain scanning has opened up new avenues of research which could help scientists to fully understand the psychological addictive nature of cigarettes. Professor Joseph McClernon from Duke University Medical Centre based in North Carolina explained that the brain scan idea was to understand why so many smokers who quit end up returning to the habit yet again.

The researchers for example noted that when ex smokers saw somebody else smoking a part of the brain recorded a lot of activity. This part of the brain which is called the dorsal striatum is the part that is responsible for routine learning habits such as brushing your teeth or balancing on a bike. This suggests that smoking becomes an automatic and unconscious routine habit after sometime and that is why it is so difficult for some people to quit. It is not therefore just about resisting temptation but also dealing with the unconscious habitual response that has developed over time.

For the research project smokers had their brain scanned before they quit and then 24 hours after they had quit and it was seen that the brain activity in response to images of people smoking was greatly enhanced in the recent quitters, which led the researchers to believe that the act of quitting smoking actually increases the sensitivity of this particular part of the brain to send the signal of desire for a cigarette.

Professor Joseph McClernon also noted that only five percent of smoking cessation attempts were successful if they were unaided and that this new research using brain scans could help to develop new treatments. This fascinating research adds weight to the evidence that a lot of the problem with quitting smoking is psychological and not necessarily physical as many people believe. The research was published in the respected medical journal Psychopharmacology.

At Ukmedix News we have also observed that many people who try to quit say that certain triggers such as a cup of coffee, a beer or a situation where they used to having a cigarette is often the thing that makes them start smoking again. Dealing with this psychological aspect of quitting smoking is often far more difficult than the physical cravings of the withdrawal from nicotine.