Smoking Produces Rapid Rise of [11C] Nicotine in Human Brain

          The article I chose was called “Smoking Produces Rapid Rise of [11C] Nicotine in Human Brain.” The researchers of this article were Marc S. Berridge, Scott M. Apana, Kenichi K. Nagano, Catherine E. Berridge, Gregory P. Leisure, and Mark V. Boswell. I chose this article because I am interested in the way nicotine can affect the brain and body. I also chose this article because I have alot of family members who have or had suffered from lung cancer due to smoking cigarettes.
          As we have already learned, drugs can affect the brain and body in many different ways. Some effects included a change in mood, increase brain tissue, increase methylphenidate, possible a tolerance built to the drug, and even physiological changes. Physiological changes included a change in brain temperature and an induction of early genes in a number of brain regions. From past classes I remember that it only takes about 10 seconds for nicotine to reach the brain after being inhaled into the lungs. The goal of this experiment was to provide the “cerebral kinetics of smoked nicotine and to measure the rate of rise of nicotine produced by a single smoked cigarette puff.” 
          There were a total of 12 participants who were required to be smokers with no criteria of how much they smoked. The participants had to consider that they were “addicted” to cigarettes and also had to report any cravings for the cigarettes. A positron emission tomography was used to measure the rise of nicotine in the lungs and brain regions of the arterial and venous blood curves after a single puff from cigarettes. Researchers found that there was a significant rise in the concentration of nicotine that reached the brain. Researchers also mentioned that the “uptake in human brain from a single inhalation was sufficiently rapid that it is plausible that fast rate-of-rise contributes to nicotine dependence in smokers.”

Source:
Berridge, M. S., Apana, S. M., Nagano, K. K., Berridge, C. E., Leisure, G. P., & Boswell, M. V. (2010). Smoking produces rapid rise of [¹¹C]nicotine in human brain. Psychopharmacology, 209(4), 383-394. doi:10.1007/s00213-010-1809-8