Smoking Withdrawal Modulates Right Inferior Frontal Cortex but not Presupplementary Motor Area Activation During Inhibitory Control

Smokers exhibit decrements in inhibitory control (IC) during withdrawal. The objective of this study was to investigate the neural basis of these effects in critical substrates of IC-right inferior frontal cortex (rIFC) and presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Smokers were scanned following smoking as usual and after 24-h smoking abstinence. During scanning they completed a Go/No-Go task that required inhibiting responses to infrequent STOP trials. Event-related brain activation in response to successfully inhibited STOP trials was evaluated in two regions of interest: rIFC (10 mm sphere, x = 40, y = 30, z = 26) and pre-SMA (10 mm sphere, x = 2, y = 18, z = 40). Smoking abstinence robustly increased errors of commission on STOP trials (37.1 vs 24.8% in the satiated condition, p<0.001) while having no effects on GO trial accuracy or reaction time (RT). In rIFC, smoking abstinence was associated with a significantly increased event-related BOLD signal (p = 0.026). Pre-SMA was unaffected by smoking condition. The results of this preliminary study suggest that successful IC during withdrawal is associated with increased processing demands on a cortical center associated with attention to inhibitory signals. Neuropsychopharmacology (2010) 35, 2600-2606; doi:10.1038/npp.2010.154; published online 22 September 2010