Tobacco Addiction According to Bruijnzeel

In the article“Reward Processing and Smoking.”, Bruijnzeel discusses how we know that tobacco addiction is a chronic brain disorder, but we still do not fully understand the neurobiological mechanisms behind why people smoke and have a difficult time quitting. He also points out that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances and how prolonged use leads to dependence and compulsive smoking.

There have been recent studies that withdrawal symptoms lead to nicotine craving and contribute to relapse. The intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) procedure was used by the Markou laboratory to investigate the effects of nicotine withdrawal on mood and showed that increase in nicotine consumption increases the sensitivity to rewarding electrical stimuli (Der-Avakian 2012). Then, on the other hand, cessation of nicotine can lead to a decrease in sensitivity to rewarding electrical stimuli. There has also been a study on rodents that shows nicotine withdrawal impairs cognitive function (Rezvani 2001). These studies then lead experts to focus more on cognition and anhedonia (Bruijnzeel 2017).

Anhedonia is usually described as a decrease in the sensitivity to rewarding stimuli and this plays a crucial role in drug use. There were studies that used time-varying effect modeling to discover more between anhedonia and the level of nicotine dependence. The study showed that during the first week after smoking cessation, anhedonia was more severe in people with high level of dependence than people with a low level of dependence (Cook 2017). Then there was a survey created that can be used to measure anticipated enjoyment from common rewards. As a result, after people quit smoking they reported a decrease in pleasure from common rewards (Bruijnzeel 2017). After drawing conclusions from these various studies, the results clearly indicated that tobacco smoking leads to impairments in the reward system and those with severe anhedonia contributed to the increase of tobacco use.

I believe that Bruijnzeel did exceptional research as to why people become so addicted to smoking and why they can hardly stop. Majority of people understand that cigarettes and other tobacco products are extremely addictive, but yet there are those that continue to use them even knowing the health implications that could affect them in the future. The research stated in this article does show that smoking cessation could lead to anhedonia, which has been shown to then lead to relapse. These studies provide crucial information on the mechanisms that contribute to relapse to smoking and hopefully, further research could lead to better treatments to help tobacco users quit and fight the urge to continue smoking.