Seeing Actors Light Up in Movies Activates Brain Regions of Smokers
It may come as no surprise that watching other people smoke makes smokers crave a cigarette, but new research provides insight as to why. A new study has found that watching actors smoke in a movie activates the brain regions of smokers that are associated with interpreting and planning hand movements, such as lighting a cigarette. Habitual smokers repeat the same hand motions several times a day.
Todd Heatherton, PhD., senior investigator of the study, and Dylan Wagner, a graduate student at Dartmouth College, wanted to determine whether parts of the brain that control routine gestures could be triggered by seeing someone else perform those gestures. They found that seeing a familiar action (even in a movie) evoked the same response as planning to make the movement. This research could help people who are trying to quit smoking, or who may be seeking addiction treatment.
Wagner said that their findings support previous studies suggesting that smokers who leave a movie that included images of smoking are more likely to crave a cigarette, compared to smokers who watched a movie without these images. He added that more research is needed to determine whether this response to images of smoking predicts relapse for smokers who are trying to quit.
For the study, 17 smokers and 17 non-smokers were asked to watch the first 30 minutes of the movie “Matchstick Men,” which prominently features smoking but lacks alcohol, sex, and violence. As they watched the movie, they underwent brain scans through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants were unaware that the study was about smoking.
When viewing smoking scenes, smokers showed greater brain activity in the brain region called the intraparietal sulcus, part of the parietal lobe that is involved in the perception and coordination of actions. In the smokers’ brains, the activity corresponded to the hand they smoked with.
Wagner said that smokers trying to quit are advised to avoid other smokers, but they might not think to avoid watching a movie that features smoking. Previous research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suggested that onscreen smoking makes adolescents more likely to smoke. Their 2010 report showed that although tobacco use has decreased in films in recent years, about half of popular movies contained smoking imagery in 2009. About half of those rated PG-13 also contained tobacco imagery.
Source: Science Daily, Watching Others Smoke Makes Smokers Plan to Light Up, January 18, 2010
