In the article "Reward Processing and Smoking", Bruijnzeel explains how we know that tobacco addiction is a chronic brain disorder, but we still don't fully understand the neurobiological mechanisms underlying why why people smoke and have difficulty quitting. It also highlights how nicotine is one of the most addictive substances and how prolonged use leads to addiction and compulsive smoking. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Recent studies have shown that withdrawal symptoms lead to nicotine cravings and contribute to relapse. The intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) procedure was used by the Markou laboratory to study the effects of nicotine withdrawal on mood and demonstrated that increasing nicotine consumption increases sensitivity to rewarding electrical stimuli (Der-Avakian 2012) . On the other hand, nicotine cessation can lead to a decrease in sensitivity to rewarding electrical stimuli. There was also a rodent study showing that nicotine withdrawal impairs cognitive function (Rezvani 2001). These studies then lead experts to focus more on cognition and anhedonia (Bruijnzeel 2017). Anhedonia is usually described as a decreased sensitivity to rewarding stimuli and this plays a crucial role in drug use. Studies using time-varying effect models have been conducted to find out more between anhedonia and the level of nicotine addiction. The study showed that during the first week after quitting smoking, anhedonia was more severe in people with a high level of dependence than in those with a low level of dependence (Cook 2017). Then a survey was created that can be used to measure the expected enjoyment of common rewards. As a result, after quitting smoking, people reported decreased pleasure from communal rewards (Bruijnzeel 2017). After drawing conclusions from these various studies, the results clearly indicated that tobacco smoking leads to impairments in the reward system and that subjects with severe anhedonia contributed to increased tobacco use. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay I believe that Bruijnzeel has done exceptional research on why people become so addicted to smoking and why they can hardly quit. Most people understand that cigarettes and other tobacco products are extremely addictive, but there are those who continue to use them even knowing the health implications that could affect them in the future. The research reported in this article demonstrates that quitting smoking could lead to anhedonia, which has been shown to then lead to relapse. These studies provide crucial information on the mechanisms that contribute to smoking relapse and, hopefully, further research could lead to better treatments to help tobacco users quit and combat the urge to continue smoking...