Brain Scans Tell If You'll Quit Smoking

In a new scientific investigation, researchers learned that it is possible to determine a person's chances of actually giving up smoking by looking at their brain with advanced brain-imaging technologies.

Apparently, neural patterns developing in the brain as a response to cues related to quitting the habit can be interpreted by specialists very thoroughly. They can then say whether the person being analyzed really stands a chance of quitting, or if they are just deceiving themselves.

Experts behind the new analysis method say that their work has other applications as well, such as, for instance, providing information about a person that not even introspection cannot.

Additionally, the work could help identify neural pathways that respond best to ads and campaigns against various unhealthy habits. Public healthcare experts could then target those neural mechanisms.

Details of the new investigation, which used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to make the discoveries, appear in the latest issue of the scientific, peer-reviewed journal Health Psychology.

“We targeted smokers who were already taking action to quit. And we found that neural activity can predict behavior change, above and beyond people's own assessment of how likely they are to succeed,” explains Emily Falk

The researcher holds an appointment as the director of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and Department of Communication Studies (DCS) Communication Neuroscience Laboratory. She was also the lead author of the new paper.

“These results bring us one step closer to the ability to use [fMRI]to select the messages that are most likely to affect behavior change both at the individual and population levels. It seems that our brain activity may provide information that introspection does not,” Falk says.

Together with colleagues Matthew Lieberman, Elliot Berkman and Danielle Whalen, Falk conducted the research with funds secured from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The researchers say that it's possible they may have discovered some interesting mechanisms in the brain that people may depend on, and report to, without even knowing it.

“It is possible that the brain activity we are observing predicts behavior 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,” Falk explains.






Video Credit: University of Michigan News Service