Neural Activity of Cues Associated with Smoking after 24-Hour Smoking Abstinence and After 7-Days of Treatment and Smoking Abstinence

摘要

More than five million of worldwide deaths are the result of direct tobacco use. Nicotine dependence, usually maintained by tobacco smoking, is a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by compulsive drug-taking and withdrawal upon abrupt cessation of intake. Although most of the smokers express a desire to quit only about 14-49% of those who initiate smoking cessation achieve abstinence after receiving nicotine replacement. Social and environmental cues associated with drug intake play a substantial role in the maintenance of habits and contribute to relapse. The objective of this work was to evaluate how cues associated with smoking affect the brain after 24-hour smoking abstinence and after 7-days of treatment with transdermal nicotine and smoking abstinence (7-days). Five adult smokers underwent 2 similar sessions, on both, 24-hour and 7-days, of a cue-viewing task during functional Magnetic Resonance Image acquisitions. After 24-hour smoking cues not only activated central cortical regions involved in motor planning but also execution and cingulate gyrus associated with emotional and social cognitions. However, greater brain activation was observed after 7-days treatment in brain regions responsible for primary visual sensory processing, higher visual attention level and right prefrontal cortex responsible for sustained attention, memory, and decision-making processes. Results of this study suggest that a period of 7-days of treatment and smoking abstinence is not the enough time to inhibit or diminish the activation of areas involved in the processing of smoking-related sensory information and the planning/selection of relevant actions.