Brain Damage Sheds Light on Urge to Smoke

ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 25 January 2007 | Greg Miller

[neverdem]

Crave no more.
Some smokers with damage to the insula (red) suddenly lose the urge to smoke.

Credit: Naqvi et al., Science

Cigarette smokers who suffer damage to a particular brain region often lose the urge to smoke, according to a new study. Although brain damage is hardly a recommended treatment for smokers who want to quit, researchers say the findings provide important insight into the biological basis of addictive behaviors. Previous research on addiction has implicated the insula, a brain region tucked into a deep fold in the cerebral cortex. In brain scans of cocaine addicts, for example, the insula lights up in response to images of drug paraphernalia. Those kinds of images also tend to give addicts an urge to take more drugs. Similarly, videos of people smoking stimulate the insula in smokers' brains. Such work suggests that the insula helps generate addicts' drug-related urges. So what would happen if the insula suddenly went offline?

Antoine Bechara, a neuroscientist at the University Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues investigated this question in 19 cigarette smokers who had suffered insula damage as a result of a stroke or other neurological problem. Twelve of these people stopped smoking immediately after their brain injury and reported feeling no urges to smoke and no relapses since they quit. "My body forgot the urge to smoke," one man told the researchers. Before his stroke he was smoking 40 unfiltered cigarettes a day and had no intention of quitting. Among a group of 50 smokers with brain damage that did not include the insula, only four quit the habit with comparable ease, the researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Science.

"This really helps us understand how the brain works in addictive disorders," says Edythe London, a neuropharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. London says the new study bolsters the idea that the insula mediates emotional responses that contribute to addiction. "Gut feelings that are associated with cravings are probably only experienced after the information is processed in the insula," she says.

The findings could have implications for how to beat addiction, Bechara says. Based on the experiences related by the insula-damaged patients, he suspects that the insula is needed create the feeling that smoking is a bodily need. Bechara notes that other research has suggested that the bodily effects of smoking--particularly the effects on the airways--are a crucial part of the satisfaction smokers get from puffing away. If so, he speculates, smoking cessation therapies such as denicotinized cigarettes may ultimately prove more effective than nicotine patches because they provide physical sensations that stimulate the insula and satisfy the smoker.

[neverdem]

Damage to the Insula Disrupts Addiction to Cigarette Smoking link to abstract

Overview of tobacco use and nicotine addiction from the National Institute on Drug Abuse

[neverdem]

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[jdm]

"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time."

[William Terrell]

It'll quietly die. Federal and state governments can't afford a effortless way to quit.

[xJones]

Brain Damage Sheds Light on Urge to Smoke

Let's bring back lobotomies, only this time not frontal!

[Eric Blair 2084]

It's already been posted. You missed all the fascinating, life changing comments from the "Conservatives of Convenience".

[fat city]

You mean all it takes is brain damage to quit smoking??? Wonder if my HMO will pay for a lot of Testers glue.

[ElkGroveDan]

There is no dark side of the moon, really. AS a matter of fact it's all dark.

[rawcatslyentist]

Carbona not glue

[knarf]

So that's why all them Pentagon hammers cost $300.00

[fat city]

My man!- You know, I don't think DeeDee Ramone smoked.

[DocH]

Brain Damage Sheds Light On Urge To Smoke, AND, as it turns out...

the inexplicable urge of so-called conservatives on FR to say they're going to vote for liberal RINOs for President of the United States.

[rmlew]

I wonder what a PET scan of a castrated sex offender would look like, when "he" sees the object of desire?
I presume that the insula would also light up.
I have a reason to believe this, other than mere conjecture. A friend of mine used to have a male boxer. Very nice dog, but it would try to mount everything that moved. Eventually, the dog got "fixed". However, the urge was still there and the dox would still play with some of its toys, once in a while. Anyway, a while back, my friend was doing some home repair and had left out a nail gun. (I told him that someone was going to go the hospital!) At any rate, Cassius survived. He was deaf in his left ear, lost some teeth, was skittish, and lost his good looks, but made it out. The only thing was, he seemed to lose interest in certain games and his teddy bear companion.

I think that we should test this notion on pedophiles. If it works, we have a solution, or serious deterent to recidivism.

[ishabibble]

I am thinking that you are talking about me, since I did post on that thread that this did happen to my mother after she suffered a basilar aneurysm in 1988. I don't recall saying anything heavy duty, just that I thought it was very strange to completely forget such a habit.

I looked at your bio page. Does your rabid hatred of smokers extend to their children as well? Sure does seem like it.

p.s. You can just jam that "Conservatives of Convenience" BS.

[neverdem]

LOL! WOULD fMRI be cheaper?

[rawcatslyentist]

Dee Dee smoked, he smoked anything that didn't smoke him first, and even some that did. 53rd&3rd

Cerially I've seen him smoking in several Ramones documentaries.

[aruanan]

Obviously the insula is needed for proper brain function. One may as well say that if one were to destroy parts of the brain that have to do with cognition that the smoker will forget he ever smoked or will make him unable even to recognize a cigarette as a cigarette.

[Eric Blair 2084]

I think you got me all wrong. I'm on the anti-smoke Nazi side. Why would you think otherwise?

[ishabibble]

Hi!

I went back and took another look at your bio page. Mea Culpa. I didn't see the top part.

Anyway, this brain injury thing really did happen to my mom in 1988. All those years ago, smoking was really the last thing that we thought about after the aneurysm. We were just glad that she survived. My mom was the kind of smoker who couldn't make it through a movie in a theater. She always had to sneak out for a puff. That's why I found her complete amnesia re smoking so incredible. The entire illness was a life changing experience, and I wasn't sure if you were being snide when you posted your remarks.

I smoke, although I can go days or weeks without a cigarette. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!

[Eric Blair 2084]

I probably wouldn't want my Mom to be a guinea pig for science, and I'm sure you feel the same way. But in the last 18 years, if they had spent half as much money on smoking cesation research as they do on anti tobacco lobbying and grant money for bogus studies and junk science to dupe the public...there would probably be a remedy better than gums or patches for those who want to quit.

PS: I guess I could see where my facetious comments could be taken out of context. I just updated my homepage again. Take another look and tell me what you think.