Smoking Scenes Triggers Smokers to Smoke

According to new research, seeing a character in a movie light up a cigarette triggers a smoker's brains to plan identical motions.

Within the research, functional MRI was used to observe mind activity in 17 smokers and 17 nonsmokers as they watched film scenes that featured smoking. Once they noticed those scenes, the smoker's brains showed elevated activity in areas involved in motion of the hand they use to smoke.

The researchers, led by senior investigator Todd Heatherton of Dartmouth Faculty, published their findings within the Jan. 19 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"Our findings support prior studies that show smokers who exit a movie that had images of smoking are more likely to crave a cigarette, compared with ones who watched a movie without them," Heatherton said in a news release from the Society for Neuroscience.

"More work is needed to show whether brain activity in response to movie smoking predicts relapse for a smoker trying to quit," he added

The researchers noted that smokers are often advised to keep away from other smokers and to remove smoking paraphernalia from their properties, however they could not have thought to avoid seeing a movie that featured scenes of smoking.

It's long been known that visual cues can cause drug cravings, said Scott Huettel, a Duke University expert in the neuroscience of decision making, who was not involved in the study.

"This finding builds upon the growing body of evidence that addiction may be reinforced not just by drugs themselves but by images and other experiences associated with those drugs," Huettel said in the news release.