Original article
Neural Sensitivity to Smoking Stimuli Is Associated With Cigarette Craving in Adolescent Smokers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.10.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

Adolescents initiate cigarette smoking at disproportionately high rates, despite widespread knowledge of its health-compromising and long-term consequences. Psychosocial factors clearly play a role in adolescent smoking initiation, but the role of the developing adolescent brain in this behavior remains unclear. The goal of the present study was to determine whether greater neural sensitivity to smoking cues in adolescents compared to adults underlies increased proclivity toward smoking behavior and craving.

Methods

We addressed this question in a sample of adolescent (n = 39) and adult (n = 39) smokers and nonsmokers by assessing craving in response to smoking videos that featured late adolescents/young adults while participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

Ventral striatal activation mediated the relationship between video-induced craving and subsequent desires to smoke following the scan in adolescent smokers only. We also found that functional coupling between striatal and cortical regions was associated with increased craving in adolescent smokers.

Conclusions

These novel results demonstrate that adolescent smokers may be more neurobiologically responsive to smoking stimuli than adults, perhaps because of ongoing ontogenetic changes in adolescents that normatively occur in frontostriatal circuitry.

Section snippets

Participants

Using community and Internet advertising, 78 right-handed, English-speaking (n = 39 postpubertal adolescents, 13–18 years; n = 39 adults, 25–30 years) smokers and nonsmokers participated (Table 1; Appendix for demographic details). Participants aged ≥18 years provided written consent, whereas participants <18 years provided assent and parents provided written consent as approved by the University of California Los Angeles Institutional Review Board. All participants self-reported that they were

Behavioral results

There was a significant main effect of cue type [F(1, 29) = 4.21, p = .05] and a significant cue type × smoking group interaction on craving [F(1, 29) = 50.19, p < .0001]. Participants reported more craving during smoking (M = 1.75, SD = .88) versus neutral cues (M = 1.26, SD = .44), with higher craving reports by smokers (M = 2.42, SD = .80) compared to nonsmokers (M = 1.10, SD = .21) during smoking cues compared to neutral cues (Figure 1B). There were no main effects of age group or

Discussion

The goal of this study was to characterize neural correlates of cigarette craving in adolescent smokers and to determine if the adolescent brain is more responsive to cigarette cues than adults. The findings reveal four novel advancements to this understudied question: (1) adolescent smokers report the same level of craving in response to cigarette cues as adult smokers, despite having a significantly shorter history of smoking; (2) exposure to smoking cues predicts changes in subsequent

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants and helpful comments from members of the Galván Lab.

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    Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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