RSSInsula and Smoking Addiction
January 26th, 2007 | View Comments
In my systems neurobiology lab this morning, my professor tipped us off to a cool little paper in the new issue of Science:
Naqvi, N. H., Rudrauf, D., Damasio, H., & Bechara, A. (2007). Damage to the insula disrupts addiction to cigarette smoking. Science, 315, 531-534.
It seems like you can download the full-text pdf of the article from the Science web site for free, at least for now.
The story is on Reuters and has been picked up by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and several hundred other news sites.
I only know the basics about the neural pathways involved in drug addiction, so all I’m going to say about the study itself is this: this is a very cool finding that should prompt a lot of interesting new research.
As for the reporting on this study, just run away from any article that suggests we’ve found the “smoking region” of the brain or that we should cure addiction by zapping the insula*. Any reporter who would write something like that clearly doesn’t know his/her globus pallidus from his/her gluteus maximus.
The worst thing I’ve found by surfing the news reports of this study is in the New York Times coverage linked above. Someone apparently thinks that the diagram on the left is illustrative of where the insula is in the brain. Maybe I don’t have the right measure of NYT readers, but I have a hard time believing that they can’t handle information a little more sophisticated than “the insula is somewhere near the middle of your head”.
The “multimedia” graphic below it in the main article isn’t very good either, as it’s really not clear at all that the insula is actually buried inside the brain, behind parts of the frontal/temporal/wee bit o’ parietal lobes (those finger-looking things that would normally be hidden by the part of the brain that’s been cut away).
*The research being done around these parts has found that the insula lights up when people are doing…math. Yeah, you try figuring out what process smoking and math have in common.
Yvonne posted this on January 26th, 2007 @ 2:02pm in Graduate School, News/Politics, Psychology/Neuroscience, Science | Permalink to "Insula and Smoking Addiction"
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2. Dick Combs » February 9th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Does anyone know how to stimulate the area of the brain called the insula with acupuncture, or electro-therapy? This would be used to try to stop smoking addiction. Please reply if you have any contact info. Thanks. Dick
3. Yvonne » February 9th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
No, and no.
1) The insula is an area deep inside the brain, which is inside your skull. You will not be able to reach it with an acupuncture needle. If you try it with electro-anything, you’ll wind up zapping parts of your temporal and frontal lobes as well, which could affect processes like memory, hearing, and language. This also means that any form of indirect stimulation will need to pass through a lot of other stuff first and potentially cause all sorts of unintended fun.
2) The insula itself is not an “addictions” region, it is an integrative region that plays a role in a LOT of different functions. Addiction is very neurologically complex, involving multiple brain areas and pathways.
3) The subjects in the study had brain damage to the insula. For all we know, stimulating the insula instead of lesioning it could make cravings worse.
4) The insula is really poorly understood. We don’t know what it really does or how it does it, particularly in relation to addictions. Nobody who knows anything about neuroscience will be recommending insula therapy based on what we know now, and anybody who does is a quack. Does this finding have important implications for therapy? Absolutely. Do we know enough to be able to create a safe and effective therapy based on this finding? Absolutely not.
4. Vicki » June 28th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I can truthfully testify that after having a stroke,and when I left the hospital I never once wanted a cigarette.
I had smoked for 47 years. It has been two years.
Just thought I would share this with you,
Vicki
1. NAKEDMEDICINE.COM » Blog Archive » Target for Addictions Identified Deep in the Brain » January 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[…] My Ph.D. student buddy (”the future Dr.”) Yvonne Kao has written about the fervor this news has created in her neurobio class. […]