Dr Amy Janes: Cognition and Connectivity: Neuroimaging Studies of Nicotine Dependence

A talk on neuroimaging studies of nicotine dependence by Dr Amy Janes, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Functional Integration of Addiction Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital.
Summary:
Nicotine dependence continues to be one of the major causes of preventable death in the developed world. Despite well-known health consequences, millions of people continue to smoke tobacco on a daily basis. Work in our lab uses neuroimaging techniques to study smoking cue-reactivity and subjective reports of craving, which are two factors linked with smoking and relapse. Specifically, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with a working memory task to show differences in the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of smoking vs. neutral memory. We suggest such activation patterns may facilitate memory for smoking-related stimuli. We also report that enhanced subjective craving corresponds with increased interactions between brain regions, signifying that craving may not be due to a single brain area but the integration of information across a network of regions. Collectively, these data provide additional information regarding the neural substrates involved in cue-reactivity and craving, which may ultimately guide the development of future smoking cessation treatments.