Altered Resting State Functional Connectivity Of The Thalamus In Young Smokers

Tobacco epidemic is one of the most important health problems the society faced with at present.Long term chronic smoking can cause toxic effects on the brain,heart and lungs.With the prevalence of cigarettes,the age of people who smoke tends to be lower,the rate of young smokers increased year by year.The function of the body during the adolescence is in the developmental stage,smoking can result in neurophysiological changes and promote nicotine dependence later in life.Thus,it is important to study the neural mechanisms of smoking during this critical period.Although the thalamus plays a very critical role in the neural mechanisms of smoking,relatively few studies focused on the thalamus resting state functional connectivity(RSFC)patterns.Therefore,this paper from the cognitive control and craving to explore the role of thalamus in young smokers.To further improve our understanding of the neural mechanisms of smoking addiction.In this study,the thalamus RSFC differences were assessed between young smokers and nonsmokers.The results revealed reduced RSFC between the left thalamus and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(dl PFC),right anterior cingulate cortex(ACC)and bilateral caudate in young smokers.Moreover,the incongruent response errors in the Stroop Color-word Task showed a negative correlation with the left thalamus-right dl PFC RSFC strength in young smokers.Besides,reduced RSFC was also revealed between the right thalamus and right dl PFC as well as bilateral insula in young smokers.The RSFC between the right thalamus and the right dl PFC also showed a negative correlation with the pack-years in young smokers.These abnormal thalamus RSFC in young smokers could provide new insights into the roles of the thalamus in nicotine addiction and improve the understanding between thalamus RSFC and behavioral impairments in young smokers.To further explore the role of thalamus in young smokers,by employing a within-subject design,we compared the two separate occasions(i.e.,smoking abstinence condition and smoking satiety condition)in young smokers.The results revealed that abstinence state showed reduced RSFC between the left thalamus and right dl PFC as well as the right ACC compared with smoking satiety state.Moreover,the correlation analysis results showed that there were significant negative correlations between the left thalamus-right dl PFC RSFC changes and the changes in craving induced by 12-h abstinence.The may contribute new insights into the neural mechanism of abstinence-induced craving in young smokers.In this paper,the between-subject and within-subject experimental design were used to assess the thalamus RSFC patterns in young smokers.This paper from the cognitive control and craving to explore the role of the thalamus in young smokers,and hoped that our study can provide an important theoretical basis for the study of the neural mechanism of smoking addiction.