Brief meditation training induces smoking reduction

Abstract

More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, but attempts to help people either quit or reduce their smoking often fail, perhaps in part because the intention to quit activates brain networks related to craving. We recruited participants interested in general stress reduction and randomly assigned them to meditation training or a relaxation training control. Among smokers, 2 wk of meditation training (5 h in total) produced a significant reduction in smoking of 60%; no reduction was found in the relaxation control. Resting-state brain scans showed increased activity for the meditation group in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex, brain areas related to self-control. These results suggest that brief meditation training improves self-control capacity and reduces smoking.addiction | anterior cingulate cortex | brain state | integrative body-mind training | mindfulness S moking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and compromising smokers' health (1). Despite the negative consequences, many smokers have difficulty quitting or even reducing tobacco use (2). In addition, many teenagers are added to the smoking roll each year and may be at risk for abuse of other substances (2). Because tobacco use is often thought of as a gateway to other drug use, reducing smoking might reduce the vulnerability of youths to cocaine and other drugs (3). Although public health campaigns may have decreased the number of smokers, current methods for aiding those who persist in smoking have had limited success (4, 5). These failures may be a result of the inability to relieve withdrawal symptoms, stress, and cue-induced cravings, which often leads to drug seeking and taking (6-10). This urgent need calls for a short-term, effective intervention for reducing smoking behavior and cravings (2).One reason for addiction to tobacco may involve a deficit in selfcontrol. Self-control is important because the level of childhood self-control predicts long-term outcomes, including mental health, substance abuse, financial independence, and criminal behavior (11). Individuals at risk for substance abuse typically have deficits in self-control (12-16). Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including dorsolateral PFC, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial orbitofrontal cortex, play a key role in addiction (12,17,18). In cigarette smokers, regional cerebral blood flow was reduced in the left dorsal ACC, and this correlated with a decrease in craving after smoking the first cigarette of the day (19). These reports raise the question of whether impaired self-control could be ameliorated and strengthened with intervention, and thus potentially change smoking behavior.There is emerging evidence that mindfulness meditation has the potential to ameliorate negative outcomes resulting from deficits in self-control (20-25). Although preliminary findings suggest mindfulness training shows some proof of efficacy in substance abuse, these studies are replete with limitations, including a lack of ...

Brief Meditation and the Interaction between Emotional Interference and Anxiety

“…Importantly, the present study shows preliminary results corroborating the idea that some meditation benefits may take effect since an early stage of practice (Tang et al, 2007;Tang et al, 2013;Taylor et al, 2011;Zeidan et al, 2010aZeidan et al, , 2010b). Nevertheless, it should be noted that comparing novice and expert practitioners yields distinct effects.…”

“…Another example of implication relates to the finding that a brief meditation training was able to reduce cigarette craving (Tang et al, 2013). We suggest this reduction might have resulted from the meditators' ability to better control the interference of cues associated with the drug, and to reduce attentional bias to these stimuli, which are processes known to normally lead to craving or to the drug use behavior (Peuker, Lopes, Menezes, Cunha, & Bizarro, 2013).…”

“…Also, more systematic comparisons of different types of meditation trainings are necessary to confirm whether the observed effects comprise core processes of all kinds of practices, or whether it is possible to disentangle particular effects for distinct meditation techniques. Data obtained from some of the cited studies derived from different meditation trainings, such as IBMT (Tang et al, 2007;Tang et al, 2013), which combines meditation, relaxation and guided imagery, as well as mindfulness (Taylor et al, 2011), which implies a more broad-monitoring awareness, in opposition to the exercise of strictly focusing attention on one object (Lutz et al, 2008), such as in the focused meditation training taught in the present study.…”

“…After attending these interventions, participants significantly improved self-reports of mood, state anxiety, and decreased cigarette craving (Tang et al, 2007;Tang, Tang, & Posner, 2013;Zeidan et al, 2010a;Zeidan, Johnson, Gordon, & Goolkasian, 2010b). In addition, after an experimental induction of stress (Tang et al, 2007), and pain (Liu, Wang, Chang, Chen, & Si, 2013), individuals who had undertaken a brief meditation training were better at reducing cortisol levels that had risen with the stressful situation, and at improving tolerance and distress during the pain experience, respectively.…”

A translational neuroscience perspective on mindfulness meditation as a prevention strategy

“…More than 80 % of addicted individuals fail to seek treatment, which might reflect impairments in recognition of severity of disorder [28,29]. There is preliminary evidence that mindfulness meditation can reduce substance use, perhaps through one or more of these hypothesized pathways [51,52]. For example, one study of mindfulness-naive smokers demonstrated reduced connectivity between craving-related brain regions during a mindfulness condition compared to passive viewing of smoking-related images during cigarette craving [53], suggesting a functional decoupling of involved regions.…”