Health - Smoking Article Review

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Tobacco Smoking Impacts Teens Brains, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2011)  Tobacco consume is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S., with more than 400,000 deaths each year attributable to smoking or its consequences. And yet teenagers motionless(prenominal)ness smoke. Indeed, smoking usually begins in the teen years, and approximately 80 percent of adult smokers became hooked by the time they were 18. Mean magical spell, teens who dont take up smoking usually never do.
While studies have linked cigarette smoking to deficits in attention and memory in adults, UCLA researchers wanted to compare principal function in adolescent smokers and non-smokers, with a focus on the anterior cerebral cortex, the area of the brain that guides executive functions like decision-making and that is still developing structurally and functionally in adolescents.
They found a disturbing correlation: The greater a teens addiction to nicotine, the less active the prefrontal cortex was, suggesting that smoking can walk out brain function.
The research appears in the current online edition of the daybook Neuropsychopharmacology.
The finding is obviously not good news for smokers, express the studys senior author, Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel set for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.




As the prefrontal cortex continues to develop during the critical period of adolescence, smoking may bring the trajectory of brain development and affect the function of the prefrontal cortex, London said.
In the study, 25 smokers and 25 non-smokers between the ages of 15 to 21 were asked to perform a test that activated the prefrontal cortex and required them to inhibit responding.
The test, called the Stop-Signal Task (SST), was done while the participants were undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The Stop-Signal Task involves press a button as quickly as doable every time a lighted arrow appears -- unless an auditive tone is...If you want to get a full essay, set up it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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