Involvement of action-related brain regions in nicotine addiction

Abstract

Yalachkov Y, Naumer MJ. Involvement of action-related brain regions in nicotine addiction. The study of Wagner et al. (J Neurosci 31: 894 -898, 2011) reveals the neural correlates of spontaneously activated action representations in smokers when subjects watch movie characters smoke. We stress the importance of differentiating how these representations are activated: while the anterior intraparietal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus are part of the mirror neuron system of smokers, the middle frontal gyrus, premotor cortex, and superior parietal lobule represent the smokingrelated tool use skills and action knowledge activated by smoking paraphernalia.action observation network; action representations; smoking UNDERSTANDING HOW MOTIVATION, memory, and executive control processes interact with drug-associated cues to trigger a relapse into drug-seeking behavior is of prime importance for the development of effective treatments for drug addiction. Correspondingly, the majority of the neuroimaging literature on drug cue reactivity has focused on subcortical and prefrontal correlates of reward, learning, and executive functions in addiction.However, basic neuroscience research has shown that further cognitive and neural processes can influence the link between an environmental cue and a behavioral response (Boy et al. 2010a,b;Grezes and Decety 2002; Lewis 2006;Nachev et al. 2008;Sumner and Husain 2008). In particular, manipulable objects activate action-related brain regions such as the premotor and parietal cortices, reflecting the engagement of automatized motor schemata and action knowledge. Furthermore, observing others' actions recruits parietal and lateral frontal cortices, which are activated also when individuals plan, imitate, or execute the same actions, thus demonstrating that the action representations can be accessed via different ways. Given that addicted people are frequently exposed to drug use paraphernalia and to other users engaging in drugtaking behavior, the precise and detailed investigation of the relevance of action-related brain regions for drug cue reactivity is essential.A recent study by Wagner et al. offers an interesting perspective on this issue (Wagner et al. 2011). Since smoking comprises a manual action component and many smokers engage in smoking in an automatized manner (Tiffany 1990), they hypothesized that brain regions such as the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which are responsible for the planning, initiating, and imitating of manual actions, would be recruited to a greater extent in smokers than in nonsmokers when subjects watch movie characters smoke. The authors measured the blood-oxygen-leveldependent (BOLD) signal in smokers' and nonsmokers' brains by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the participants watched movies containing both smoking and neutral scenes. The subjects were told that the authors were interested in the neural correlates of watching movies. Thus, subjects did not have any particular e...

The top‐down regulation from the prefrontal cortex to insula via hypnotic aversion suggestions reduces smoking craving

“…Whole-brain analyses revealed the activations induced by cue (smoking pictures vs. neutral picture) identified in previous nicotine addiction studies (Chen et al, 2018;Courtney, Ghahremani, London, & Ray, 2014;Yalachkov & Naumer, 2011), including left precuneus, rMFG and right inferior parietal lobule (Table 3) in the control state (see Supporting Information). Whole-brain analyses indicated the brain activation by cue (smoking pictures vs. neutral picture) was comprehensive during hypnotic state (Table 3).…”

The Action Representation Elicited by Different Types of Drug-Related Cues in Heroin-Abstinent Individuals

“…It is known that superior and inferior parietal cortices, posterior MTG and inferior temporal cortex, which are called action-representation regions, store and process action knowledge and tool use skills (Lewis, 2006 ; Buxbaum et al, 2007 ) involved in motor preparation and output (Yalachkov and Naumer, 2011 ). IPL and SPL are also associated with links between and synthesizing of sensory and motor signals (Jacob and Jeannerod, 2005 ), characterized as a motor resonance system (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004 ).…”

“…aIPS and IFG regions were more strongly activated in smokers when they observed other smokers than nonsmokers (Wagner et al, 2011 ). In other words, smoking cues activated corresponding action representations of addiction in smokers’ brains (Yalachkov and Naumer, 2011 ), which may indicate that the sensorimotor cortex is involved in the cue-induced reactivity.…”

Factors modulating neural reactivity to drug cues in addiction: A survey of human neuroimaging studies

“…Drug-taking skills have been suggested to constitute the core of drug acquisition and consumption behavior, which becomes highly automatized after repeated practice (Tiffany, 1990). However, the neural representations of drug-taking skills in the PMC, MC, SMA, SPL, IPL, pMTG, ITC and cerebellum have only recently attracted the interest of the addiction field (Wagner et al, 2011; Yalachkov et al, 2013; Yalachkov et al, 2009, 2010; Yalachkov and Naumer, 2011). …”