A new study developed by a team of researchers from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Roanoke (USA) has shown that cognitive beliefs play a crucial role in a person’s neurological response to a substance that causes addiction . Playing with our beliefs can help us reduce the neurological effects of this substance in our body. The work has been published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Addiction seems to be more than a biochemical response to a specific drug since not all people respond in the same way to these substances, so there must be other mechanisms that make a difference in addictive behaviors. Which are?
With this starting point, the researchers conducted an experiment with 24 chronic smokers who were offered a cigarette with or without nicotine , randomly distributing cigarettes among the subjects (some were told that the cigarette it had nicotine and didn’t actually contain it, for example). This experiment was repeated four times and functional magnetic resonance images were taken in each of them in order to study the neuronal signals of the volunteers .
The results revealed that the neurological response of the participants was very different if they believed that the cigarette had nicotine than if it did not ; the neurological response was stronger if they believed that the cigarette contained nicotine. That is, being convinced not to smoke nicotine reduces its neurological effects .
This study brings to the table scientific evidence that shows that what we believe has more weight in our neurological system than previously thought regarding the effectiveness of nicotine in our body.
“Cognitive beliefs can be as powerful as pharmacological interventions in terms of modifying biophysical processes in the brain and changing behavior in addicted people ,” explain Xiaosi Gu and Terry Lohrenz, authors of the study.
