Brief meditation training induces smoking reduction

Abstract

More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, but attempts to help people either quit or reduce their smoking often fail, perhaps in part because the intention to quit activates brain networks related to craving. We recruited participants interested in general stress reduction and randomly assigned them to meditation training or a relaxation training control. Among smokers, 2 wk of meditation training (5 h in total) produced a significant reduction in smoking of 60%; no reduction was found in the relaxation control. Resting-state brain scans showed increased activity for the meditation group in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex, brain areas related to self-control. These results suggest that brief meditation training improves self-control capacity and reduces smoking.

Keywords: addiction; anterior cingulate cortex; brain state; integrative body–mind training; mindfulness.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Demonstration of smoking change (parts per million, PPM) after 2 wk of IBMT and RT. After 2 wk of training, there were significant smoking reduction in the IBMT group (but not in the RT group). PPM is an index of the exhaled CO level.

Fig. 2.

Increased ACC activity after 2 wk of IBMT. After 2 wk of IBMT, we found significantly increased activity at ACC/medial PFC, orbitofrontal cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus/ ventrolateral PFC (displayed at Pcorrected < 0.05).

Fig. 3.

Comparison between changes in self-report and objective CO measure of smoking. There is a mismatch between self-report of daily cigarettes using FTND and objective CO measure of smoking amount. (Left) IBMT group. (Right) RT group.