Nicotine takes the edge off rage

Smoking to relieve stress is nothing new, but now a brain imaging study shows just how nicotine can blunt our anger response. People who received half a nicotine patch dose proved less likely to rise to provocation, compared to when they took a placebo. This may support the idea that angry or stressed-out individuals can more easily become addicted to cigarettes, LiveScience reported.

“The findings suggest that people in anger provoking situations may be more susceptible to the effects of nicotine,” said Jean Gehricke, a psychiatry researcher at the University of California in Irvine.

The study pitted a group of nonsmokers against a nonexistent game opponent whose “behaviour” was designed to irritate and provoke. The simple computer game involved a race to see who could click a mouse button fastest in response to seeing a red square appear. The twist—players in the game could set punishments where the loser would have to hear a blast of white noise over headphones. Winners could set the intensity and duration of the annoying sound, but players could also see what the other person had set as a punishment level.

Researchers who controlled the fake opponent gradually raised the punishment level for the participants. That translated into an open invitation for people to retaliate by raising punishment levels, but people on the nicotine patch were less easily provoked and inflicted shorter punishment.

Turns out that the nicotine targets a system of the brain focused on regulating emotion, known as the limbic cortex, LiveScience said. PET scans showed increased brain activity in those brain regions for people on the patch. Such calming effects of nicotine may act as an anger management crutch for people who tend to be angrier.