NICOTINE AND THE BRAIN [ back to What's New ]
Why do people smoke? The nicotine delivered by cigarette smoke causes decrease of tension, a sensation of pleasure and an increase of concentration and memory helpful to performing work. These effects relate to the release of certain neurotransmitters in the brain on arrival of nicotine, such as opioids and dopamine. The problem with getting your nicotine from cigarette smoke is that the tars in the smoke cause fatal lung cancers and heart disease. Not  surprisingly the people who have the hardest time quitting the habit are people with a genetic flaw in dopamine transport, people who are very reliant on an outside stimulant for internal release of dopamine (the reward chemical.  In the Jan. 1999 issue of Health Psychology a medical psychologist at Georgetown, Caryn Lerman, published a stud showing that persons with a certain dopamine transporter gene were less likely to start smoking and more likely to quit smoking than persons lacking the gene. How is RJ Reynolds handling all the negative publicity about smoking? The 6/28/99 edition of the Wall Street Journal reports that RJ Reynolds has decided not to get into the nicotine patch business to help smokers quit (which would undermine its existing product sales), but has decided to plan for the future (when fewer people will smoke) by developing medical applications for nicotine as a pharmaceutical.  Solid clinical research has shown that smokers are less likely to get Alzheimer's or Parkinson's than non-smokers and, if they do get it, tend to develop it later in life in less severe form. No one knows why this is so, but Alzheimer's patients have much fewer nicotinic receptors in their brains than other people and smokers have more. The new unit of RJ Reynolds (called Targacept for "Target" and "Receptors") will compete head on with established drug companies to develop and market nicotinic drug compounds for such diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, depression, ADHD, Tourettes and chronic pain.