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Linking Brain Network Dynamics to Imminent Smoking Lapse Risk and Behavior

Who can join

Ages 21 to 65 · All sexes · Healthy volunteers welcome

Inclusion Criteria:

* Participants must be between the ages of 21 and 65.
* Participants must be fluent English speakers.
* Participants must pass an MRI safety screening.
* Participants must report smoking at least six cigarettes per day continuously for at least the 12 preceding months.
* Participants must have a baseline expired-air carbon monoxide exceeding 10 parts per million in order to verify smoking status.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Individuals will be excluded if they report that they are not willing to refrain from using nicotine for 12 hours before the experimental lab visit.
* Individuals will be excluded if they have any known risk from exposure to high-field strength magnetic fields (e.g., pacemakers), any irremovable metallic foreign objects in their body (e.g., braces), or a questionable history of metallic fragments that are likely to create artifact on the MRI scans.

About the study

Most attempts to quit smoking end in relapse, or a return to regular smoking. One of the biggest threats to cessation is a lapse (i.e., any cigarette use during a quit attempt). Thus, characterizing why lapses occur is essential to understanding and preventing smoking relapse. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a promising method for characterizing the psychological processes that lead to smoking lapses because it provides a way to measures patterns of brain activity thought to reflect relevant mental processes as they change over time. However, methodological issues have hindered the ability to capitalize on this potential and prevented an understanding of how brain activity and corresponding psychological processes unfold in the critical moments that immediately precede a smoking lapse. The proposed project will address this knowledge gap using a novel fMRI paradigm adapted from a well-validated behavioral lapse task. The goals of the project are to characterize changes in brain activity that lead up to a lapse and to investigate how these changes are related to concurrent affect and subsequent cigarette use.

What is being tested

• Laboratory task modeling smoking lapse behavior (behavioral)

Sponsor: Penn State University · Participants: 150 · Started: Apr 4, 2023

Contact the study team

Official record on ClinicalTrials.gov — NCT05572671

Locations in the U.S.

Conditions

• Smoking and Youth

From ClinicalTrials.gov, data retrieved Sep 30, 2026. Each study sets its own eligibility; the study team decides who can join.