Injury to brain shown to help smokers completely kick habit

Damaging a part of the brain known as the insula can reduce or completely eliminate the urge to smoke, according to a recent study at the University of Iowa. This could lead to a revolution in how smoking addiction can be treated.

The lead researcher, UI graduate student Nasir Naqvi, started the study based on a former research subject of his, said Dr. David Rudrauf, a post-doctoral scholar at the university. While conducting a study on smoking addiction, Naqvi found a man with brain damage who said after the damage occurred, his body "forgot the urge to smoke."

Naqvi then, encouraged by his advisor, began a study of nearly 70 smokers who had suffered brain damage, Rudrauf said. About half had quit after the injury, and were asked about their experience of quitting smoking.

Researchers found that people with damage to the insula quit immediately and without difficulty, Rudrauf said. The insula, located fairly deep in the brain's outer layer, is involved in awareness of the body's state, emotions and urges.

How these studies might be applied practically, however, is still up in the air.

"Pharmacologically, it's not clear if there are any receptors that can be targeted specific to the insular," said Rudrauf, one of the authors of the study.

There are a few ways other than drugs that could be used to fight smoking addiction, based on discovering the role of the insula, Rudrauf said. One would rely on a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation - a magnetic coil, positioned outside the head, is used to generate magnetic pulses capable of shutting down specific regions of the brain. But the location of the insula poses a potential problem for this method.

"TMS is usually used on regions near the surface of the brain," he said. "It's not very specific or good enough to hit deep structures like the insula. Technology is going to need to go farther."

Robert Barlow, professor of neuroscience and ophthalmology at the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center, said this study could be critical to the health community.

"Stopping smoking is the single most important voluntary action someone can do to improve their health," he said.

The difficulty of quitting smoking also shouldn't be underestimated, Barlow said. Experiments were done in the 1980s where monkeys would perform tasks to receive different addictive substances. Only when the reward was nicotine did the monkeys go as far as to work themselves to death by exhaustion.

"Of all the addictive drugs, nicotine is equal to or more addicting than any of them," he said.

The dangers of nicotine and smoking take a special relevance when it comes to the Syracuse campus, Barlow said. Cigarette companies, despite government attempts to curb it, target advertisements specifically at people under 20.

"Cigarette companies know," he said. "They know if you don't get a person to start smoking by age 20, there's a very low chance statistically that they will start after that."

Campus smokers, however, appear to be skeptical of the study's findings.

"It's interesting, but I'm not going to brain damage myself to quit smoking," said Mary Beth Pinkowski, a freshman political science major. "Enough products are on the market right now that you don't have to put your brain at risk."

Freshman biology major Fabian Wagner had a similar opinion.

"There are plenty of things to help you quit smoking right now," he said. "I don't think this will really help."

A personal experience of Juan Lujan, a freshman majoring in television, radio and film, on the other hand, had him offering a different perspective. A brother of one of his friends, a smoker, suffered a concussion while skating. Lujan said after the accident, the brother completely forgot he smoked.

"I mean, after brain damage you can forget how to do a lot of things, like walking," he said. "It could be a good thing. You just have to be careful with it," he said of a product based on this research.

A study is currently underway at UI that looks to connect the insula with bulimia, which could result in new ways to treat that as well, Rudrauf said.