Scientists have found that stimulating brain activity may provoke relapse when smokers are attempting to quit.These astonishing new findings could pave the way for more targeted treatments for everything from drug and alcohol abuse to obsessive-compulsive disorders.
There are many methods that smokers use in an attempt to reduce their craving for discount Pall Mall cigarettes, including efficacious pharmacologic treatments such as nicotine patches, and alternative approaches such as hypnosis and acupuncture.
Scientists have long suspected that these diverse approaches might work through a common mechanism - the reduction of activity in a brain circuit that is responsible for cigarette craving.
This hypothesis is supported by human functional brain imaging studies, which consistently report the activation of several brain regions during craving that involve regions in the cerebral cortex as well as the limbic system, a brain circuit involved in emotion.
