"When you see people sucking, you will want to suck" The brains of smokers react to movies as well

Smoking cigarettes in front of people who are smoking is harsh, but even smokers who do not have smokers close to us can only see people smoking cigarettes on movies and TV, It may be getting.

Experiments have revealed that in the brains of smokers who saw people who smoke cigarettes in the movie, the same parts as their own hands activate tobacco are activated.

Details are as below.Society for Neuroscience - News Release fromThe Journal

The smoker repeats the series of hand actions such as to take out the cigarette from the case, carry it to the pinching mouth, carry it to the pinch mouth, suck it, breathe it, keep it away from the mouth and carry it to the mouth again and again.Dartmouth CollegeDr. Todd Heatherton and colleagues and colleagues in Dr. Todd Heatherton et al. Reported that in order to investigate whether this part of the smoker's brain controls this routine behavior is activated by a visual trigger to see people smoke, actually smokers Show movie smoking sceneFMRIWe conducted an experiment to observe the condition of the brain. Thesis isJournal of NeuroscienceIt is published in the magazine.

In the experiments, 17 subjects, each of smokers and non-smokers,Match stick · menI watched the beginning of the opening for 30 minutes, during that time I observed my brain's activity with fMRI. The reason why the beginning of "Matchstick · Men" was used is because the smoking scene is a prominent movie, and there are no drinking scenes, violence and sexual description.


Subjects were not told that the experiment was a theme related to smoking, but when a person who smokes a cigarette appears on the screen, in the brains of smokersParietal lobeofParietal grooveIt was observed that activity increased in parts related to control and cognition of body movement, such as. These brain activities correspond to the movements of the hands that smokers use to smoke cigarettes.

A smoker after watching a movie with a smoking scene already had a study showing that it tends to strongly crave tobacco when leaving the cinema, compared with smokers who saw a movie without a smoking scene That's right, this time it was the first time that we actually observed the brain activity of smokers who responded to the movie's smoking scene.

It is often said that "to avoid other smokers as much as possible" and "not to place smoking instruments in an area that can be touched" with advice to people aiming for smoking, but conscious of the movie with smoking scenes It is not likely that there are quite a few people to avoid. However, the smoking scene of the movie seems to lead to "handling one" which is a trigger for smoking cessation.

Also, it has been warned for a while that movie smoking scenes lead to young people smoking,America Disease Control CenterAccording to the announcement in 2010 in the year, smoking scenes in the movie have been decreasing in recent years, but still 2009 still smoking was depicted in about half of popular movies.

Duke UniversityDr. Scott Huettel, a neuroscientist and not involved in this study, said, "Drug dependents' craving for drugs has long been known to be triggered by visual cues. It will be a new corroboration that dependence will be strengthened not only by the drug itself, but also by a variety of experiences related to visual images and drugs. "