Smoke screen: how likely are you to stop smoking?

Despite the apparent serenity with which the lady-on-the-advert manages to kick her fag habit, it can take more than the latest nicotine patch / lozenge / suppository to stop smoking.

And looking past the unnerving way such adverts manage to market your own will power back to you; self-discipline is a major component of the sinew joining that one last cig with actually quitting.

But just how dedicated are you to giving up? Perhaps more than you think. Emily Falk, director of University of Michigan’s Communication Neuroscience Laboratory, headed up a study to see if people who had increased neural activity when watching anti-smoking ads changed their smoking behaviour in the following months.Twenty-eight heavy smokers trying to quit underwent fMRI brain scans as they watched a series of ads that drummed in the benefits of a smoke-free lifestyle.

The part of the brain being studied was the prefrontal cortex, an area which is associated with figuring out conflicting thoughts as well as social control. Earlier research from the same team of scientists had proposed this area in the brain was predictive of behaviour change.

Prior to the scans, participants filled out a questionnaire which examined their smoking history, nicotine dependence and intentions about quitting. They also had their exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) levels measured. Tobacco smoke is known to contain high levels of CO, which binds to hemoglobin, a protein used for oxygen transport in the blood. Nonsmokers have, on average, less than 10 parts per million (ppm) CO in their exhaled breath whereas 20-a-day smokers often get readings of 20-30ppm.

A month later, researchers got in touch with the subjects to check their progress, and take a second CO reading to judge their daily fag intake.

“We found that neural activity can predict behaviour change, above and beyond people’s own assessment of how likely they are to succeed” said Falk.

The implications of the research reach further than just cutting out the fags. Experiments, such as Falk’s, echo the studies of Dylan-Haynes, where through the study of a subject’s frontal lobe, scientists were able to predict choices before the subjects consciously made them.

“It is possible that the brain activity we are observing predicts behaviour change that is not predicted by people’s self-reports, because it is tapping into something that people aren’t consciously aware of when they initially see the ads,” said Falk.

Reason then, for frustrated quitters to take a celebratory puff on their nicotine inhalers. As it turns out, watching that woman calmly stub out her last cigarette and never go back could actually be doing you a service-you just don’t realise it.

Soon, C., Brass, M., Heinze, H., & Haynes, J. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain Nature Neuroscience, 11 (5), 543-545 DOI: 10.1038/nn.2112

Other Elements articles in which you might be interested:

1. Smoking can be good for you
2. Smoking can be good for you
3. Research round up