Smoking produces rapid rise of [11C] nicotine in human brain

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

Smoking produces rapid rise of [11C] nicotine in human brain  

I chose this article because I feel that smoking and nicotine it a very interesting topic when dealing with the brain. Most think that smoking mainly affects the lungs, teeth, gums and so one but how many times do you hear well I wonder if this cigarette is affecting my brain.  This article looks at the difference of nicotine being smoked and then by being given intravenously and how the rate is showed present rise in the brain. Intravenously was previously researched. There has been research done on how fast drugs enter the brain and their effects on the different parts of the brain. There have been in-depth studies on how nicotine and cocaine rise in the brain have been related to having tolerance and sensitization to the drug. In this case the rate at which the drug affects and enters the brain is important because it affects behavior and psychological thinking. In this experiment they hypothesized the rate of rise on nicotine in the brain after one puff is rapid enough to affect the neuropharmacology and behavioral psychology of smoking. They used 12 healthy subjects both male and female, who were smokers with no restriction on amount they smoked. All of these individuals labeled themselves as “addicted” to smoking. The method they used was preparing a 10 mm length cigarette into a device that only allowed for the participant to smoke one puff. The cigarettes were Carbon-11 labeled nicotine. They then did PET scans on the patients looking at their lungs, brain regions, and arterial and venous blood curves. These patients had brain MRI’s done a week before the study in order to provide a baseline. When they analyzed the MRI and PET scans they found that in the brain and lung regions there was decay-corrected [11C] nicotine activity present. They found in this study that there was a rise on nicotine following a single puff, in just 15 seconds after the puff the nicotine had reached 50% of the maximum brain levels. In accordance to previous research this study proved that a single puff on nicotine reached the brain faster than when it is intravenously inserted. This study is very interesting in that it provides a better understanding of just how quick smoking can affect not only the body but also the brain.