Spontaneous action representation in smokers when watching movie characters smoke.
Do smokers simulate smoking when they see someone else smoke? For regular smokers, smoking is such a highly practiced motor skill that it often occurs automatically, without conscious awareness. Research on the brain basis of action observation has delineated a frontoparietal network that is commonly recruited when people observe, plan, or imitate actions. Here, we investigated whether this action observation network would be preferentially recruited in smokers when viewing complex smoking cues, such as those occurring in motion pictures. Seventeen right-handed smokers and 17 nonsmokers watched a popular movie while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Using a natural stimulus, such as a movie, allowed us to keep both smoking and nonsmoking participants naive to the goals of the experiment. Brain activity evoked by movie scenes of smoking was contrasted with nonsmoking control scenes that were matched for frequency and duration. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers showed greater activity in left anterior intraparietal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus, regions involved in the simulation of contralateral hand-based gestures, when viewing smoking versus control scenes. These results demonstrate that smokers spontaneously represent the action of smoking when viewing others smoke, the consequence of which may make it more difficult to abstain from smoking.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA. dylan.d.wagner@dartmouth.edu
Dylan D
DD
Wagner
Sonya
S
Dal Cin
James D
JD
Sargent
William M
WM
Kelley
Todd F
TF
Heatherton
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009040:Motion Pictures; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012907:Smoking / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*
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