Brain Activity May Indicate Whether a Person Will Stop Smoking
Brain activity can be measured to assess the decision of a person who wants to quit smoking, according to a study by American researchers.
The study, published Monday in the journal Health Psychology, was conducted on a sample of 28 smokers enrolled in a program created to help them quit smoking.
Participants were invited to watch a series of messages about the process of quitting smoking, while a scanner recorded their brain activity. Researchers analyzed a region of the cortex associated with behavior changes.
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After each message, the patients "wrote in a notebook the way that each message has influenced the decision to stop smoking and if the message has increased their determination."
People, whose medial prefrontal cortices exhibited a specific activity during the broadcast of the messages, were found to be significantly more committed to reduce their cigarette consumption during the month that followed.
"Knowing what happens in the brain of a person ... we can better predict their future behavior, compared to the situation where we know only his own assessment about the chances to quit," said Emily Falk, director of University of Michigan's Communication Neuroscience Laboratory, the main author of the study.
After a slow decrease since 2000, the percentage of adult smokers in the population remained constant after 2005, in the United States, at around 20-21 percent, according to official U.S. statistics. Each year, in the United States, approximately 443,000 people die due to diseases associated with smoking.
