
Teens’ desire to start smoking, and later to keep smoking, may be linked to differences in gray matter in their brains, a new study reveals. Researchers found that reduced gray matter in the left frontal lobe was found in kids who started smoking by age 14. This area is involved in decision-making and rule-breaking. Once they started smoking, they also had reduced gray matter in the right frontal lobe, a region associated with seeking pleasure. “Smoking is perhaps the most common addictive behavior in the world, and a leading cause of adult mortality,” said co-senior author Trevor Robbins, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the U.K.’s Cambridge University. “The initiation of a smoking habit is most likely to occur during adolescence. Any way of detecting an increased chance of this, so we can target interventions, could help save millions of lives.” Gray matter is brain tissue that processes information and contains all of the brain’s neurons. Growth of gray matter peaks before adolescence. The evidence that these teens had low gray matter volume in the left side of the prefrontal cortex may be an “inheritable biomarker” for nicotine addiction, the study authors suggested. The loss of gray matter in the right prefrontal cortex appeared to speed up only after someone started smoking. “In our study, reduced gray matter in the left prefrontal cortex… read on > read on >