Quit Smoking. Neurophysiology And Psychology

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-15 16:05

Usually, the decision to quit smoking comes to a person who has given more than one year to this bad habit. And it often happens that this person has made repeated attempts to quit smoking.

To be effective at what you do, you need to understand how your brain works. The article is divided into 2 parts: the first part describes the theoretical aspects that support this habit; in the second, a practical technique.

So, our habits are reinforced and sustained by what gives us some pleasure, otherwise we would not use them. The pleasure system consists of a series of brain structures that, when stimulated, lead to feelings of pleasure.

Before the very act of smoking, the pleasure expectation center, located in the center of the midbrain, is activated. An experienced smoker instantly imagines the process of smoking (which can sweep through the head like a thought - "smoking") and its positive effect on the emotional state. This act of ideation releases a dose of pleasure neurotransmitters (dopamine) that influence decision-making centers. Further, during the smoking process, reward centers are also activated, which release endogenous opioids and endorphins, and this is associated not only with satisfying the physiological need for nicotine, but also, for example, with a decrease in mental stress, anxiety, and distraction from negative experiences. The tobacco alkaloid affects the blood vessels of the brain, which at the very beginning of tightening expand, the person feels clarity of mind, there is a surge of energy and strength, the smoker experiences uplift (this effect gradually decreases, and since smoking clogs the blood vessels, this effect is equivalent to the usual state of a non-smoker person).

How does a habit form in our brain? The basal ganglia play a key role in the step-by-step formation of habits. They are associated with the area of the brain that makes decisions (forebrain) and that that controls movement (premotor, motor cortex). The main habit-forming part of the basal ganglia is called the striatum. It receives chemical signals from neurons containing dopamine. It promotes habit formation in the sense that every action is rewarded with a sense of pleasure. Usually the striatum is divided into 2 parts - dorsal (caudate nucleus, lenticular nucleus, shell) and ventral (nucleus accumbens). The dorsal part is important for making decisions and choosing how to respond to any event, and shares this role with the prefrontal cortex. The nucleus accumbens is associated with systems of reward, reinforcement, and depending on its work, a transition from a simple performance of an action to a constant purposeful desire to perform this action (addiction) can occur.

Conventionally, one can imagine that the decision to smoke a cigarette is made by the striatum. But in the brain, as already mentioned, there is another center for decision-making - the prefrontal cortex.

Over time, smoking becomes an automatic process. In the brain, the urge to take a cigarette begins in a similar way to when you pick up a fork while eating. A person who smokes a pack a day puts a cigarette in his mouth several hundred times a day for many years. Undoubtedly, after a while he will already perform this action automatically. It can be assumed that this process does not affect the areas of the prefrontal cortex that influence decision making.

But there are also "inhibitory" pathways in the brain that "extinguish" automatisms. One of these is called the inhibition control network and begins in the right inferior frontal gyrus, passing through the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus. Signal transmission along this pathway is often disrupted in smokers' brains. And the researchers tried to find out how much he was involved in the desire of smokers to get rid of the habit.

Scientists studied the inhibitory control network in the brains of 81 nicotine-addicted adults who had completed a 10-week program to recover from their addiction. Researchers used functional MRI to monitor brain activity while patients were performing a specific task. They had to press a button every time a colored circle appeared on the screen, except in those rare cases when a circle of a special previously agreed color appeared. And depending on how much the oxygen supply to the control area increased each time a rare circle appeared and it was necessary to "stop", scientists could judge the activity of the network suppressing automatism.

After 10 weeks, about half of smokers have successfully said goodbye to the habit.

Those who performed worse on the task, respectively, had less control over their automatic behavior and were more prone to relapse than members of the "more successful" group. Containing their automatic behavior required more effort.

Somatic marker hypothesis by Antonio Damasio

Somatic markers are a mechanism of human behavior that can be influenced by emotional processes when making decisions. This hypothesis was formulated by Antonio Damasio, professor of neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Southern California.

According to this hypothesis, it is emotions that are understood as certain states of the body that play an essential role in decision-making. Emotions that underlie decisions made can be realized (become feelings) or remain unconscious, but decisions are made on the basis of emotions.

Damasio came to his main idea by observing patients with injuries to the ventromedial region of the anterior frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex (the ventromedial part of the prefrontal cortex). This kind of damage occurs as a result of injuries, tumors, and strokes. Patients who previously succeeded in business, profession, social relations, after the disease have lost the ability to evaluate people, make decisions, learn from their own mistakes. In a sense, they became emotionally insensitive. They could not even sympathize with themselves and talked about their losses, dryly presenting the facts, while their interviewers could hardly hold back their tears. When they were shown photographs of victims of car accidents, they did not feel emotion. Verbally, they described the situations depicted as tragic, but the skin conduction reaction, PKK, which serves as an objective indicator of emotion, was not observed. They could talk about feelings, but they could not experience them. During the tests, they demonstrated an understanding of moral norms, social goals and the means of achieving them, the ability to predict the consequences of various actions - but only speculatively, in words. They could not apply this knowledge in real life. One of the patients, named Elliot, drew up an impressive list of behaviors during an interview and then said, "After all this, I still don't know what to do."

According to Damasio's hypothesis, a certain emotional state of the body must precede conscious decision-making: when we make a choice, we unconsciously weigh the options for behavior and their consequences on the scales of emotions.

Thus, knowledge without emotional cues "leads to a dissociation between what the person knows or says and what he chooses to do."

How does this information fit in with your smoking habit? Even if you are convinced of the dangers of smoking for your health, for your finances, but when faced with the body's request for a portion of nicotine, you repeatedly decide to smoke, because, in fact, you have 2 alternatives - either smoke a cigarette and get a positive emotion, relieve tension, or do nothing and endure the discomfort from the obsessive desire to smoke. The result of the choice is obvious.

Learned helplessness regarding the smoking habit

The phenomenon of learned helplessness is associated with passive, maladaptive human behavior. Learned helplessness is a violation of motivation as a result of the subject's experience of being out of control of the situation, i.e. independence of the result from the efforts made ("all my efforts are in vain"). If a person who is convinced that smoking is doing more harm than good, and tried to get rid of this habit, but these attempts were unsuccessful, a feeling of helplessness and uncontrollability of the smoking habit is formed. A person perceives his habit as something not subject to his will.

Learned helplessness is both the sensations and cognitive biases associated with the habit. The most common distortions look something like this:

• I can quit any time I want … A person says this to himself year after year, the question arises, does a person say this to himself or does his habit say it? The urge to smoke will always be felt stronger than the urge to quit. It is necessary to consciously understand that smoking is useless. Do not expect that you will no longer want to smoke, but consciously understand that you are a nicotine addict, and every hour or two there is a physiological need for nicotine, which causes the desire to smoke.
• I will not be able to quit, because I will constantly be tempted to smoke, and, in the end, I will smoke.… In fact, this "itch" of desire lasts for several minutes, then subsides, and the less you pay attention to it, the faster the decline will be. Naturally, when stimuli arise, the desire will be renewed, and so will subside. Each time, this "itch" is easier and more controllable. The physiological need for nicotine from outside (i.e. cigarettes) lasts from 1 to 3 days, then the body begins to produce its own nicotine. And the normal work of acetylcholine receptors is restored after about three weeks of complete abstinence.
• Some live to a hundred years and smoke all their lives, this must happen to me … People draw this conclusion based on sources from the press or television, but this is a unique isolated case, which is why it became the subject of a story or an article.
• To quit smoking, you need to make huge volitional efforts.… What is will? American psychologist William James considered the role of volitional effort in decision making … The choice is made from two or more motives on the basis of purposeful focusing of attention on the object, which in this concept is a volitional act. The mechanism of any such act included the element "Let there be!" as consent to perform a certain action. “A volitional effort is an effort of attention. The point of effort is to continue to support and accept a thought that, if left on its own, will slip away. The effort of attention is thus the most important manifestation of will. " Those. volitional effort consists in keeping attention on the object which is preferable and which has been chosen. You have a concept of "how to smoke" that is firmly embedded in your psyche. But what is “no smoking” for you? It is impossible to carry out an act of will, or make a decision in favor of something that does not exist.
• Smoking helps me cope with stress. In fact, nicotine does not have a sedative effect, and cigarettes do not help to relax. The ritual of smoking itself soothes. Moreover, nicotine is a stress factor: firstly, nicotine excites the sympathetic nervous system, as a result, the heart rate increases, the adrenal glands release adrenaline into the blood. Autonomic manifestations of the sympathetic nervous system are perceived as anxiety. All these sensations are fueled by the thought that cigarettes may run out, or there will not be a suitable moment to smoke. Secondly, since nicotine is a poison, ingestion of it leads to increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. As a result, smoking helps to cope with stress, which it also provokes.

What thoughts do you use that support the smoking habit?

What drives you to use tobacco? What are the incentives? What are the desired consequences of tobacco consumption?

Practice

Desire felt in the body.

Let's say you are a smoker and you are convinced that smoking is harmful, costly, etc. And you have the intention to quit smoking. Think, what would you have valuable if not for smoking? Why smoking deprives you? It can be happiness, peace of mind, independence from the obsessive desire to smoke, and other reasons that cause you positive emotions. Once you've decided on this, amplify the feeling - how you would like it to be. It should be felt in the body.

2) Decision-making.

According to LS Vygotsky, decision-making is the creation of a new brain connection as a functional apparatus.

The first graph shows a hypothetical model of a functional smoking system.

Ordinary situation. Excitation (desire to smoke) arises in the central nervous system, the brain analyzes all excitations and makes a decision, then a behavioral act follows (a person lights a cigarette). The desire to quit smoking refers to the excitement experienced by a person, for example, when reading an article about the dangers of smoking. Or the excitement you felt doing the first exercise.

Picture 1

Now the exercise itself. The time has come and you feel like you are tempted to smoke. And when that desire reaches the decision-making level (you can even reach for a cigarette), you stop and pause. But do not just hold, but also deliberately evoke the desire that you experienced in the first exercise. It will take some time for this desire to surpass the desire to smoke in arousal, keep pause until the excitement (conditionally “the desire to quit smoking”) crosses the line of decision making, then there will be a behavioral act - you can remove or throw out the cigarette. Continue to feel this desire.

Figure 2

If you have reached the point where the brain has decided in favor of the second desire, then now you can taboo smoking. Feel that you are now in control of the habit, not you.

Of course, this still does not guarantee that you will now quit smoking, you still need to take care of external factors that provoke the desire to smoke. All in your hands.

List of sources:

1. Dyatlova N. K.. Somatic markers and their significance for the individual. Article

2. Kamarovskaya E. How to help a student? We develop memory, perseverance and attention.

3. Serikov A. E. Emotions and free will in the context of neurophysiology. Article.

4. Sudakov K. V. Functional systems

5. Amy Brann. Put your brain to work. How to maximize your efficiency.

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