Environments as Smoking Cues: Imaging Brain Substrates, Developing New Treatments (CameraCue)

Duke University

Status

Completed

Conditions

Healthy

Smoking

Treatments

Behavioral: Quit Smoking 24 hours

Behavioral: Quit Smoking 6 hours

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT01840111

Pro00033975

Details and patient eligibility

About

The overarching goals of this proposal are to 1) identify the network of brain regions specifically activated by personal smoking environment cues and 2) to evaluate the effects of exposure to these cues on smoke self-administration and subjective reactivity. The results of this study will inform the development of novel and more efficacious cue-exposures therapies targeted at helping smokers quit smoking and will provide novel mechanism information regarding the influence of environmental context on drug taking.

The investigator hypothesizes that cue-exposure treatments (CETs), in which drug use is prevented during exposure to drug cues (e.g. lit cigarette) have been of limited efficacy in part because they have not included cues representative of the contexts in which drug use occurs. By demonstrating that context cues have a differential and robust influence on brain and behavioral responses, we will have provided a substantial basis for including such stimuli in the context of treatment. At the same time, we will have identified novel mechanisms by which such stimuli promote continued drug use and relapse.

Enrollment

67 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 55 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

generally healthy
between the ages of 18 and 55
smoking an average of 5 cigarettes per day for at least one year
breath CO (carbon monoxide) level > 8 ppm (if ≤ 8 ppm, then NicAlert Strip > 2)
no interest in quitting smoking for the duration of time required for the experiment
right-handed as measured by a three-item scale used in our laboratory
ability to identify 4 personal smoking and 4 personal non-smoking places

Exclusion criteria

inability to attend all required experimental sessions
significant health problems
use of psychoactive medications
use of smokeless tobacco
current alcohol or drug abuse
use of illegal drugs as measured by urine drug screen
current use of nicotine replacement therapy or other smoking cessation treatment
presence of conditions that would make MRI unsafe (e.g., pacemaker)