New Treatment to Quit Smoking: Brain Damage

Researchers at the University of Southern California recently conducted a study that has led them to believe that the insula, a region of the brain tucked into a deep fold in the cerebral cortex, is responsible for addictive behaviors. During brain scans of patients with different addictions such as cigarettes, the brain would light up simply by showing the patients images of people smoking. However, when 19 cigarette smokers who had suffered damage to the insula were tested, 12 of them said that they no longer had the urge to smoke at all. In a similar study with 50 patients that had suffered damage to other parts of the brain, only 4 actually quit that habit.
This article was very interesting to me because it provides a possible way for treating not only addictions to cigarettes but possibly other addictive behaviors.
This is not to say brain damage is recommended to quit smoking, but understanding exactly what part of the brain is affected allows researchers to pinpoint where therapeutic drugs should be targeted.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/125/1