An SIUC professor has spent the last six years depriving smokers of nicotine to discover why people smoke and why some people have an easier time kicking the habit than others.

David Gilbert, an associate professor in psychology, is the man behind a $1 million study focusing on the effects of smoking in women. The study is being funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It has brought a total of $1.4 million to the University.

Gilbert said he and his staff of about 10 or 12 graduate students and about 20 undergraduates want to discover how different types of people, such as depressed people, react to giving up cigarettes. He said he hopes smoking cessation programs could be tailored more specifically to fit different people’s needs.

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That’s one major application of the study individualized treatment based on a person’s life situation, Gilbert said.

The women’s study started its third year of research this month and should be completed in 1997, Gilbert said. A smaller study focusing on men, also funded by the NIDA, is set for completion later this year.

In the smoking lab in Life Science II, Gilbert and his staff systematically deprive about two-thirds of the women participants of cigarettes for 31 days. These people comprise what Gilbert calls the immediate group.

The remaining participants make up the delayed group, a control group that only quits smoking for 48 hours at the end of the study, but goes though all the same testing as the immediate group. Gilbert said the control group is used to see if simply participating in the study has an effect on people.

All participants are required to attend five experimental sessions during their first month in the study, Gilbert said. These sessions last about 3 1/2 hours. Participants sit in a recliner chair in a small room while electrodes attached to their heads record brain wave activity. Concentration tests are given via a computer screen in front of the recliner. Sometimes the tests are accompanied by distracting noises from an overhead speaker.

Gilbert said performance on these tests usually drops when a person quits smoking, but it improves after a couple of weeks.

In an adjacent room, Gilbert’s staff closely watches the sessions on a video monitor. Any time a participant blinks his or her eyes, the corresponding brain wave data must be thrown out because eye movement affects brain waves, Gilbert said.

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A nurse takes blood and saliva samples at these sessions to check hormone levels and to make sure the participants are not sneaking cigarettes while they are away from the lab.

You can’t cheat, Gilbert said. If someone has a cigarette, we can tell.

All participants also must fill out a questionnaire evaluating their moods every 48 hours, Gilbert said.

see SMOKING, page 6