Smoking scenes in movies light up smokers' brains

Seeing a character in a movie light up a cigarette triggers smokers' brain  areas that are known to interpret and plan hand movements to plan the same motions, as though they too were about to light a cigarette.

It's long been known that visual cues can cause drug cravings. Habitual smokers repeat the same hand motions, sometimes dozens of times a day. To determine whether the parts of the brain that control that routine gesture could be triggered by simply seeing someone else smoke, researchers used functional MRI to monitor the brain activity in 17 smokers and 17 nonsmokers as they watched movie scenes that featured smoking. The volunteers were unaware that the study was about smoking.

When the participants saw those scenes, the smokers' brains showed increased activity in the parietal lobe as well as other areas responsible for the perception and coordination of actions involved in movement of the hand they use to smoke.

The 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. Further studies are needed to show whether brain activity in response to movie smoking predicts relapse for a smoker trying to quit.

The researchers noted that smokers are often advised to avoid other smokers and to remove smoking paraphernalia from their homes, but they may not think to avoid seeing a movie that includes scenes of smoking. Scientists have long known that visual cues often induce drug cravings and the findings of this study build 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.