More Brain Points

Can you really be addicted with one try?

Nicotine is a highly used addictive substance in the US. If its really addictive, how would one ever quit? What are the reasons behind this addiction? And can one smoking experience make you addicted? It is known that nicotine addiction is caused by the area of the brain that is stimulated. This stimulation is a reward pathway that elevates levels of dopamine which increases the brain’s pleasure center. If you’re constantly receiving reward/pleasure it would make sense to keep going to the source of that reward or pleasure, hence why nicotine is addictive. It is so addictive that it is hard to quit smoking or any use of nicotine completely. In an article posted in Psychology Today it states. “nicotine withdrawal activates anxiety- related brain circuitry.” 

There are many reason why people smoke. However, the most common use of smoking is to reduce stress or anxiety. When a person tries to quit smoking it triggers all that stress and anxiety during withdrawal. The findings given in the article showed that there are certain roles in different regions in the brain that can help reduce the withdrawal symptoms. The regions of the brain they focused on was the interpenduncular nucleus and insula.  These regions tend to deal with motor control and both are active in symptoms of withdrawal. They mentioned mindfulness, meditation, and neurofeedback as treatments to help quit smoking while reducing the negative affects. 

Dan McGehee from the University of Chicago came to Loyola University Chicago to talk about his work in nicotine aversion and reward. Part of his lecture explained the statistics of adults smokers who want to quit versus those that succeed. There is a whole process that goes along within neurotransmitters and synapses as nicotine enters the body. These neurotransmitters work to reward the stimulus entering which aids in addiction. However one way to treat nicotine addiction is through aversion. Nicotine aversion has both reward and aversive effects. A person’s first experience with smoking can either be future dependent on nicotine or completely aversive. He mentioned that being able to explore nicotine induced behavior and circuits in the brain would be helpful in finding new treatments since relapse is very high. Going back to the article there are many possibly treatments to explore. If we are able to find the links that McGehee mentioned and combine them with the brain regions that the article mentioned then maybe there could be more treatments to help combat the high relapse of people who try to break their nicotine habit. 

The article can be found below

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201505/whys-it-so-hard-quit-smoking-neuroscience-has-new-clues