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The neural mechanisms of immediate and follow-up of the treatment effect of hypnosis on smoking craving

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Abstract

Hypnosis has a therapeutic effect on substance dependence. However, its neural basis remains unclear, which impedes its further clinical applications. This study investigated the mechanisms of smoking treatment based on hypnosis from two perspectives: immediate and follow-up effects. Twenty-four smokers screened from 132 volunteers underwent hypnosis suggestion and performed a smoking-related cue task twice during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning (in normal and hypnotic states). The number of cigarettes smoked per day was recorded at follow-up visits. The smokers reported decreased craving after hypnosis. The activations in the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC), the left insula and the right middle frontal gyrus (rMFG), and the functional connectivity between the rDLPFC and the left insula were increased in the hypnotic state. The reduced craving was related to the DLPFC-insula network, which reflected the immediate mechanism of hypnosis on smoking. The number of cigarette use at the 1-week and 1 month follow-up was correlated with the rMFG activation which reflecting hypnotic depth, suggesting the follow-up effect of hypnosis on smoking depended on the trait of smokers. We identified two different mechanisms of hypnosis effect on smoking, which have important implications for design and optimization of hypnotic treatments on mental disorders.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the smokers who participated in our study. We thank Guanbao Cui for his help in organizing recruitment and testing. This work was supported by grants from The National Key Basic Research Program (2016YFA0400900 and 2018YFC0831101), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31471071, 31771221, 61773360, and 71874170), and the Anhui Natural Science Foundation (1808085MH291), and the project of human social science of Anhui province (SK2016A047), and Grants for Scientific Research of BSKY (XJ201826) from Anhui Medical University, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China. A portion of the numerical calculations in this study were performed with the supercomputing system at the Supercomputing Centre of USTC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Psychology, Chaohu Clinical Medical College, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, Anhui, China

    Xiaoming Li

  2. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230027, Anhui, China

    Lijun Chen, Ru Ma, Li Wan, Junjie Bu, Wei Hong, Wanwan Lv & Xiaochu Zhang

  3. CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lijun Chen

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lijun Chen

  5. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, Anhui Province, China

    Haibao Wang

  6. Neuroimaging Research Branch, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Yihong Yang

  7. Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Hengyi Rao

  8. School of Humanities & Social Science, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, China

    Xiaochu Zhang

  9. Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 30074, China

    Xiaochu Zhang

  10. Hefei Medical Research Center on Alcohol Addiction, Anhui Mental Health Center, Hefei, 230031, Anhui, China

    Xiaochu Zhang

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  1. Xiaoming Li
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Correspondence to Haibao Wang or Xiaochu Zhang.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The study was approved by the Human Ethics Committee of the University of Science and Technology of China. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. All participants signed a written informed consent form before the experiment and were paid 400 Chinese Yuan.

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Li, X., Chen, L., Ma, R. et al. The neural mechanisms of immediate and follow-up of the treatment effect of hypnosis on smoking craving. Brain Imaging and Behavior 14, 1487–1497 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-019-00072-0

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