MOTIVATION & BRAIN

Motivation & Brain

Introduction

It is common knowledge that most smokers have tried to quit this dangerous habit at least once. Every smoker knows the effects and implications of engaging in this destructive behavior but somehow feels unable to alienate himself from this life threatening weakness. From among the people who have tried to quit smoking many fail initially and many resume the habit sometime later in their lives. From among those fortunate people who actually do manage to quit on their own, willpower and resilience are two of the most important traits. This characteristic cannot be attributed to people who have been forced to quit by external factors such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases or other major eventualities.

Discussion and Analysis

To draw viable conclusions from the phenomena of quitting smoking, it is imperative that the functions of the brain and its structural aspects are studied. There is sufficient evidence to believe that the behavior and motivation of quitting smoking is directly related to the functions of the brain. With the involved factors such as will power and commitment, which are actually psychological in nature, the study can be attributed significantly to the field of neuro science. Functional MRI images were obtained while current smokers, former smokers and never smokers performed tasks designed to assess specific cognitive skills that were reasoned to be important for smoking abstinence. These included a response inhibition task to assess impulse control and the ability to monitor one's behavior and an attention task which assessed the ability to avoid distraction from smoking-related images, which tend to elicit an automatic attention response in smokers. The brain regions which are related to willpower, significantly show an increased level of activity in people who have quit smoking. During the studies, it was found that people who have never developed the habit of smoking show a considerably lower level of activity in the prefrontal regions that are related to controlling behavior. In addition, the current smokers showed elevated activity in sub-cortical regions such as the nucleus accumbens that respond to the reward value or salience of the nicotine stimuli. However, in marked contrast, the former smokers did not show this sub-cortical activity, but instead showed increased activity in the frontal lobes - the areas that are critically involved in controlling behavior. Moreover, the former smokers were "super-normal", showing greater levels of activity in these prefrontal regions than the never-smokers. These conclusions have been drawn with the help of functional MRI imaging of the brains of smokers and non-smokers.

Smoking has been widely discouraged and condemned by health organizations and social groups. Governments and health professionals also joined in on the efforts. The truth is that the tobacco business has become one of the biggest industries in the world. Despite knowing the harmful and permanent effects of this social evil, smokers actively engage in this behavior. What is it that prevents smokers from flaying this habit? What are the factors that render all their efforts of quitting useless? The answers to these ...