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Why is it so difficult to quit smoking?
Even though countless people enroll in smoking cessation programs, most are unable to quit. What is it in tobacco that keeps people puffing? Margaret Rice recently began searching for the answer, and her Fulbright grant brought her closer to finding it.
A neuroscientist at New York University, Rice spent nearly a year in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford in England, where she and her colleague, Stephanie Cragg, enhanced their understanding of tobacco addiction.
The two looked at the regulation of dopamine in the brain in relation to nicotine addiction. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter critically involved in controlling body movement and cognitive processing and also in mediating motivation and reward. Dopamine dysfunction has been implicated in Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and substance abuse.
“Many drugs, including cocaine and amphetamines, are addictive because they increase the levels of dopamine in the reward centers of the brain,” Rice explains. “Addictive drugs mimic the effects of natural rewards, like food and sex. Our studies show that at brain levels achieved during smoking, nicotine enhances dopamine levels in these reward centers. This means that nicotine, like other drugs that are abused, hijacks the natural reward signals to cause not only pleasure, but also dependence and craving.” The work the two completed, Rice says, should markedly shift the understanding of nicotine addiction and may ultimately lead to new strategies to relieve it.
Another outcome of the work is the impact it may have on understanding how nicotine enhances the addictive properties of other drugs, from alcohol and amphetamines to cannabis (marijuana) and cocaine. The work was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience this past fall in New Orleans and will be published in the United Kingdom.
Not only was Rice’s work in the laboratory quite rewarding, she was also honored to serve as a judge for the Paton Prize, given by Oxford’s Department of Pharmacology to a second-year postgraduate student who makes the best research presentation.
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As for her most memorable experience, Rice says it is impossible to choose only one. “It could be receiving the first e-mail welcoming me,” she says. “Or it could be attending world-class lectures. There was also the excellent Fulbright symposium in London, where I chaired a session on drug policies in the United Kingdom. Then there was rowing on the Thames and the Christmas Eve children’s service at St. Mary’s, the university church I attended on my first Christmas away from America.” Perhaps her most cherished moment was riding her bicycle in Oxford on a beautiful fall day. “For a moment, at least, I was part of a university with a long history and a great tradition of learning.”
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