Two studies used a cigarette versus neutral cue paradigm paired with functional imaging to evaluate brain mediation of cigarette craving. In one study (Due et al. 2002), six smokers and six nonsmokers underwent event-related fMRI when presented with smoking-related images (color photographs) compared with neutral images, for 4 s each. For the smoker group, craving increased during the testing session and exposure to smoking-related images resulted in activation of mesolimbic (right posterior amygdala, posterior hippocampus, VTA, and medial thalamus) and visuospatial cortical attention (bilateral prefrontal and parietal cortex and right fusiform gyrus) circuitry, whereas the nonsmoker group did not have these changes. In the second study (Brody et al. 2002), 20 smokers and 20 nonsmokers underwent two FDG–PET sessions. For one PET session, subjects held a cigarette and watched a cigarette-related video, while for the other, subjects held a pen and watched a nature video (randomized order) during the 30-min uptake period of FDG. When presented with smoking-related (compared to neutral) cues, smokers had higher regional metabolism in bilateral (ACC), left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and left anterior temporal lobe. Change
