Individual differences in brain responses to cigarette-related cues and pleasant stimuli in young smokers

Drug Alcohol Depend. 2016 Jun 1:163:229-35. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.04.025. Epub 2016 Apr 25.

Abstract

Background: Decreased sensitivity to pleasant stimuli is associated with a higher vulnerability to nicotine dependence in youths and with difficulty quitting in adult smokers. Recently, we showed that smokers showing lower brain reactivity to non-cigarette-related pleasant images than to cigarette-related ones have lower chances of achieving long-term abstinence during a quit attempt.

Methods: We tested whether individual differences in brain responses to cigarette-related and pleasant stimuli require a long history of smoking to develop by measuring the late positive potential (LPP) to cigarette cues, emotional, and neutral stimuli in 45 young, light smokers (ages 18-25). k-means cluster analysis was used to partition smokers into two groups based on the magnitude of their LPPs.

Results: Group 1 was characterized by larger LPPs to pleasant pictures than cigarette-related pictures whereas Group 2 showed the opposite pattern.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that individual differences in brain responses to cigarette-related and pleasant cues do not require a long smoking history to develop.

Keywords: Addiction; Emotion; Smoking; Young adults.

Publication types

  • Randomized Controlled Trial

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Cues*
  • Emotions / physiology
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Individuality*
  • Male
  • Photic Stimulation / methods
  • Pleasure / physiology*
  • Smoking / physiopathology
  • Smoking / psychology*
  • Smoking Cessation / psychology
  • Tobacco Products*
  • Tobacco Use Disorder / physiopathology
  • Tobacco Use Disorder / psychology
  • Young Adult