Drug Alcohol Depend
December 2024
Aims: Over the recent decades, smoking among women has become an increasingly pressing public health challenge. Mounting evidence suggests that, compared to men, women's smoking is more strongly influenced by habitual responses to sensorimotor cues. To understand the brain mechanisms underlying the cessation challenges commonly reported by women who smoke, the present study used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate sex-related volumetric differences in the dorsal striatum, a region implicated in habitual substance use behavior, and their associations with self-reported quit interest among daily smoking adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate characteristics of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychopharmacology (Berl)
September 2021
Rationale: Reducing nicotine content in cigarettes to ≤ 2.4 mg per g of tobacco [mg/g] reduces smoking behavior and toxicant exposure among adult daily smokers. However, cigarettes with similar nicotine content could support continued experimentation and smoking progression among young adults who smoke infrequently.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: We describe the development and pilot testing of the experimental tobacco and nicotine product marketplace (ETM)-a method for studying tobacco and nicotine product (TNP) choices and use behavior in a standardized way.
Aims And Methods: The ETM resembles an online store populated with TNPs. Surveillance activities and data from a US representative survey and consumer reports were used to determine the most popular TNPs for inclusion in the ETM.
Smoking withdrawal negatively impacts inhibitory control, and these effects are greater for smokers with preexisting attention problems, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The current study preliminarily evaluated changes in inhibitory control-related behavior and brain activation during smoking withdrawal among smokers with ADHD. Moreover, we investigated the role of catecholamine transmission in these changes by examining the effects of 40 mg methylphenidate (MPH) administration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Reducing cigarette nicotine content may reduce smoking. Studies suggest that smokers believe that nicotine plays a role in smoking-related morbidity. This may lead smokers to assume that reduced nicotine means reduced risk, and attenuate potential positive effects on smoking behaviour.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Tobacco use disorder is associated with dysregulated neurocognitive function in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)-one node in a corticothalamic inhibitory control (IC) network.
Objective: To examine associations between IC neural circuitry structure and function and lapse/relapse vulnerability in 2 independent studies of adult smokers.
Design, Setting, And Participants: In study 1, treatment-seeking smokers (n = 81) completed an IC task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before making a quit attempt and then were followed up for 10 weeks after their quit date.
Environments associated with prior drug use provoke craving and drug taking, and set the stage for lapse/relapse. Although the neurobehavioral bases of environment-induced drug taking have been investigated with animal models, the influence of drug-environments on brain function and behavior in clinical populations of substance users is largely unexplored. Adult smokers (n=40) photographed locations personally associated with smoking (personal smoking environments; PSEs) or personal nonsmoking environment (PNEs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmoking abstinence impairs executive function, which may promote continued smoking behavior and relapse. The differential influence of nicotine and non-nicotine (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmoking cessation results in withdrawal symptoms such as craving and negative mood that may contribute to lapse and relapse. Little is known regarding whether these symptoms are associated with the nicotine or non-nicotine components of cigarette smoke. Using arterial spin labeling, we measured resting-state cerebral blood flow (CBF) in 29 adult smokers across four conditions: (1) nicotine patch+denicotinized cigarette smoking, (2) nicotine patch+abstinence from smoking, (3) placebo patch+denicotinized cigarette smoking, and (4) placebo patch+abstinence from smoking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There has been significant progress in identifying genes that confer risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). However, the heterogeneity of symptom presentation in ASDs impedes the detection of ASD risk genes. One approach to understanding genetic influences on ASD symptom expression is to evaluate relations between variants of ASD candidate genes and neural endophenotypes in unaffected samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Research is needed on initial smoking abstinence and relapse risk.
Objective: This study aims to investigate the effects of different durations of initial abstinence on sensitivity to smoking-related stimuli and response inhibition in the context of a larger battery of outcome measures.
Methods: Smokers were randomly assigned to receive payment contingent on smoking abstinence across all 15 study days (15C) or just the final 2 days (2C).
Smoking withdrawal-induced disruption of affect and cognition is associated with dysregulated prefrontal brain function, although little is known regarding the neural foci of smoker-nonsmoker differences during affective cognition. Thus, the current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify smoker-nonsmoker differences in affective cognition. Thirty-four healthy volunteers (17 smokers, 17 nonsmokers) underwent fMRI during an affective Stroop task (aST).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Studies of individuals who do not meet criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) but with subclinical levels of depressive symptoms may aid in the identification of neurofunctional abnormalities that possibly precede and predict the development of MDD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate relations between subclinical levels of depressive symptoms and neural activation patterns during tasks previously shown to differentiate individuals with and without MDD.
Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess neural activations during active emotion regulation, a resting state scan, and reward processing.
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med
August 2012
Meditation practice alters intrinsic resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the default mode network (DMN). However, little is known regarding the effects of meditation on other resting-state networks. The aim of current study was to investigate the effects of meditation experience and meditation-state functional connectivity (msFC) on multiple resting-state networks (RSNs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmoking abstinence disrupts affective and cognitive processes. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the effects of smoking abstinence on emotional information processing. Smokers (n = 17) and non-smokers (n = 18) underwent fMRI while performing an emotional distractor oddball task in which rare targets were presented following negative and neutral task-irrelevant distractors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although functional brain imaging has established that individuals with unipolar major depressive disorder (MDD) are characterized by frontostriatal dysfunction during reward processing, no research to date has examined the chronometry of neural responses to rewards in euthymic individuals with a history of MDD.
Method: A monetary incentive delay task was used during fMRI scanning to assess neural responses in frontostriatal reward regions during reward anticipation and outcomes in 19 participants with remitted major depressive disorder (rMDD) and in 19 matched control participants.
Results: During the anticipation phase of the task, the rMDD group was characterized by relatively greater activation in bilateral anterior cingulate gyrus, in right midfrontal gyrus, and in the right cerebellum.
Psychopharmacology (Berl)
April 2012
Background: Among nicotine-dependent smokers, smoking abstinence disrupts multiple cognitive and affective processes including conflict resolution and emotional information processing (EIP). However, the neurobiological basis of abstinence effects on resolving emotional interference on cognition remains largely uncharacterized. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate smoking abstinence effects on emotion-cognition interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Acute nicotine abstinence is associated with disruption of executive function and reward processes; however, the neurobiological basis of these effects has not been fully elucidated.
Methods: The effects of nicotine abstinence on brain function during reward-based probabilistic decision making were preliminarily investigated by scanning adult smokers (n = 13) following 24 h of smoking abstinence and in a smoking-satiated condition. During fMRI scanning, participants completed the wheel of fortune task (Ernst et al.
Smoking withdrawal is associated with significant deficits in the ability to initiate and maintain attention for extended periods of time (i.e. sustained attention; SA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmokers exhibit decrements in inhibitory control (IC) during withdrawal. The objective of this study was to investigate the neural basis of these effects in critical substrates of IC--right inferior frontal cortex (rIFC) and presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Smokers were scanned following smoking as usual and after 24-h smoking abstinence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Compared to nonsmokers, smokers exhibit a number of potentially important differences in regional brain structure including reduced gray matter (GM) volume and/or density in areas including frontal and cingulate cortices, thalamus, and insula. However, associations between brain structure and smoking cessation treatment outcomes have not been reported.
Objectives: In the present analysis we sought to identify associations between regional GM volume--as measured by voxel-based morphometry (VBM)--and a smoking cessation treatment outcome (point prevalence abstinence at 4 weeks).
Rationale: Exposure to smoking-related cues can trigger relapse in smokers attempting to maintain abstinence.
Objectives: In the present study, we evaluated the effect of 24-h smoking abstinence on brain responses to smoking-related cues using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Materials And Methods: Eighteen adult smokers underwent fMRI scanning following smoking as usual (satiated condition) and following 24-h abstinence (abstinent condition).
Exposure to smoking cues increases craving for cigarettes and can precipitate relapse. Whereas brain imaging studies have identified a distinct network of brain regions subserving the processing of smoking cues, little is known about the influence of individual difference factors and withdrawal symptoms on brain cue reactivity. Multiple regression analysis was used to evaluate relations between individual difference factors and withdrawal symptoms and event-related blood oxygen level-dependent responses to visual smoking cues in a sample of 30 smokers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychopharmacology (Berl)
November 2007
Rationale: A dopamine receptor 4 variable number tandem repeat (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism has been related to reactivity to smoking cues among smokers, but the effect of this genetic variation on brain responses to smoking cues has not been evaluated.
Objectives: The present study evaluated the relationship between carrying the DRD4 VNTR 7-repeat allele and transient functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses to smoking cues among adult dependent cigarette smokers.
Materials And Methods: Smokers (n = 15) underwent fMRI scanning after 2-h abstinence.