Researcher discovers technique to reduce cigarette cravings
If you name it, you can tame it. That’s a promising new way to fight cigarette cravings, according to assistant research psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia.
Her discovery, recently published in the Springer Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology, reveals that a technique she dubbed “cue labeling” — mentally naming the triggers that make you want to smoke — can reduce the subjective experience of craving and the brain activity associated with it.
“Name it to tame it! Putting feelings into words has long been known to calm emotions,” Tabibnia wrote on LinkedIn when announcing the publication. “Our latest paper shows that putting what we crave into words can help calm cravings.”
Studies show that each year, about half the U.S. adults who smoke attempt to quit, yet fewer than 10 percent sustain abstinence for six months or longer. Cigarette craving, often triggered by smoking-related cues, remains one of the most significant barriers to successful cessation.
Tabibnia and her collaborators designed the study and collected the data more than a decade ago when she was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Then, life intervened.
“I unexpectedly had to leave academia and go on hiatus for many years,” Tabibnia explained in a recent interview. But she never forgot about the data sitting unanalyzed. “Upon my return, I applied for NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding to go back to this data set and analyze it. And I guess, despite the time lapse, it's still relevant, and they funded it.”
That funding — a $469,992 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse — came through the NIH Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21) program.
The reunion with her former collaborators proved sweet. “Some were students at the time and are now assistant professors,” she noted. “It's been a really fun reunion.”
Now, back in the UC system where she earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in psychology at UCLA, Tabibnia holds a unique position at UC Irvine as the only faculty member in the Department of Psychology who focuses entirely on research.
How “cue labeling” works
Tabibnia tested the cue labeling technique this way: During brain imaging scans, 50 adults who smoked cigarettes daily completed a task where they viewed images of cigarettes and smoking-related scenes. In some trials, they simply matched the images with one another, a condition that elicited strong cravings. But in other trials, they selected words that labeled features of the cigarettes or smoking scenes: “puff” or “pack,” “smoke” or “mouth,” “lighter” or “ashtray.”
The seemingly small change made a measurable difference.
Self-reported craving dropped and brain scans revealed reduced activity in the precuneus, a region in the medial parietal cortex that previous research has linked to cigarette craving and negative emotional states.
“I think that in the context of emotion regulation, and probably to some extent, craving regulation, what you’re doing when you’re putting feelings into words is that you’re effectively taking it out of your automatic, sort of less conscious parts of the brain, and you’re bringing it into the more volitional parts of the brain where you can actually bring control over it,” Tabibnia explained.
The precuneus is part of what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the regions that activate when our minds wander.
“It’s kind of the mental chatter, the background mental chatter that a lot of psychotherapies are designed to help you bring under control,” she said. “There’s this obsessive component to it, this rumination, or over-and-over looping in the mind.”
When participants engaged in cue labeling, they activated their prefrontal cortex — the brain's control center — which in turn may have quieted that mental chatter.
“It kind of makes sense,” Tabibnia noted. “It’s part of the reason people drown their sorrows in their work. They get themselves busy with work, engaging their prefrontal executive parts of the brain, and so then the default mode network can nag them a little less.”
Effective for older adults
Her most surprising finding was that age moderated the effects.
Adults over 46.7 years old showed substantially greater benefits from cue labeling. In the older group, the technique reduced craving by a clinically meaningful amount (effect size of 0.29), essentially returning cue-induced craving to baseline levels.
“The older group’s better craving regulation may stem from shared mechanisms underlying the regulation of craving and negative affect,” Tabibnia noted in the paper.
“Older adults often report fewer negative emotions and may exhibit enhanced emotion regulation,” she said, “as shown in research by our own department’s faculty and others.”
The age effect is particularly important given that smoking cessation success rates decline after age 45, she added.
“We need accessible interventions for late midlife and older adults,” Tabibnia said. “Given that cue labeling is convenient, essentially cost-free, and devoid of adverse effects, it offers a strong cost-benefit profile.”
Indeed, the technique stands in stark contrast to other cognitive interventions like reappraisal, which require training and significant mental effort.
“When cognitive reserve is reduced, such as in older adulthood or nicotine withdrawal, cue labeling may be a more feasible, acceptable, and effective alternative,” Tabibnia said.
Real world practice
“If you find yourself craving and you’re having a hard time, you can try naming the thing that’s triggering you,” Tabibnia suggested. “Is it the way the package looks or feels in your hand? Is it the color? Is it the smell? Anything that is a trigger for you, use a word to name it.”
The technique doesn’t eliminate cravings entirely, but that’s not the point.
“It doesn’t change the craving by a huge amount, but sometimes that little bit could be what you need to help you step back from the ledge,” Tabibnia explained.
The next step, she said, would be to work with clinicians who provide behavioral therapy for smoking cessation.
“I think it would probably be a very straightforward thing,” she said. “If you find yourself craving and you’re having a hard time, just name the trigger.”
The implications extend beyond smoking.
Tabibnia believes labeling “may serve as a transdiagnostic intervention for reducing both negative affect and craving, potentially addressing two key psychological triggers of smoking.”
— Mimi Ko Cruz