• April 28, 2024

Have you tried a thousand times to quit but the addiction is so strong that you always fall into temptation? A study details that responsible for this is your brain.

A team of scientists identified a particular region of the cerebral cortex that would influence the smoking addiction , which would be a new tool to study to help people quit.

This is what helps you kick the habit!

The researchers studied smoking patients who survived strokes with different injuries, and found that those with damage to the insular cortex more easily abandoned the habit of smoking .

Currently, the majority of smokers leave the cigarettes helped by products that are on the market, which block the reward pathways of the brain in response to nicotine.

Other products such as patches aim to decrease the craving of a cigarette by providing a controlled dose of nicotine.

The results of the new research suggest that the insular cortex of the brain it would be related to the "need" to smoke, since patients with lesions in that region reported fewer withdrawal symptoms than others with damage in different areas.

This finding could help find some treatment that helps people give up smoking , experts point out in an article published in the medical journal Addiction and Addictive Behaviors.

Further research on this would contribute to the development of therapies that point to the insular crust and alter their role in tobacco addiction, either through new drugs or through deep brain stimulation techniques, they say.

The insular cortex or insula is a structure that lies deep in the lateral surface of the brain human, within the groove that separates the temporal and inferior parietal cortices, so it is not visible.

The scientists studied 156 patients, all smokers, who were hospitalized after suffering a stroke , 38 of them suffered damage to the insular cortex and the other 118 had lesions in other parts of the brain.

Everyone was asked to stop smoking and monitored for three months to see how many gave up cigarettes and how easy or difficult the process was for them.

The majority of patients with lesions in the insular cortex ( 70 percent) managed to refrain from smoking completely during the three months, while among those with other types of damage some abandoned the investigation and others faced a very complicated task.

The former suffered less withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety , hunger, anger, insomnia and anxiety, the researchers said. "It's as if your body has forgotten the need to smoke," they add.

Much more research is needed so that we understand better the underlying mechanism and the specific function of the insular cortex, but it is clear that something happens in this part of the brain that is influencing the addiction, "they point out.

Video Medicine: Going Sugar-Free: 3 Best Ways to Help You Kick the Habit (April 2024).