1. ¹Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2. ²UCI Department of Physics, Irvine, CA, USA
3. ³UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, USA
4. ⁴UCLA Brain Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA
5. ⁵UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Correspondence: Dr AL Brody, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, 300 UCLA Medical Plaza, Suite 2200, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA, Tel: +1 310 268 4778, Fax: +1 310 206 2802, E-mail: abrody@ucla.edu

Received 21 May 2009; Revised 15 August 2009; Accepted 8 September 2009; Published online 28 October 2009.

Abstract

While bupropion HCl and practical group counseling (PGC) are commonly used treatments for tobacco dependence, the effects of these treatments on brain function are not well established. For this study, 54 tobacco-dependent cigarette smokers underwent resting ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose–positron emission tomography (FDG–PET) scanning before and after 8 weeks of treatment with bupropion HCl, PGC, or pill placebo. Using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM 2), changes in cerebral glucose metabolism from before to after treatment were compared between treatment groups and correlations were determined between amount of daily cigarette usage and cerebral glucose metabolism. Compared with placebo, the two active treatments (bupropion HCl and PGC) had reductions in glucose metabolism in the posterior cingulate gyrus. Further analysis suggested that PGC had a greater effect than bupropion HCl on glucose metabolism in this region. We also found positive correlations between daily cigarette use and glucose metabolism in the left occipital gyrus and parietal–temporal junction. There were no significant negative correlations between daily cigarette use and glucose metabolism. Our findings suggest that bupropion HCl and PGC reduce neural activity much as the performance of a goal-oriented task does in the default mode network of the brain, including the posterior cingulate gyrus. Thus, this study supports the theory that active treatments for tobacco dependence move the brain into a more goal-oriented state.