You may renember the homunculus – a projection of body functions on brain areas. There is an interesting clinical extension stemming from 69 stroke patients of which 15 immediately, easily and permanently quit smoking. One patient said that his “body forgot the urge to smoke”. Sure, this analysis may still be somewhat confounded by the fact that certainly more areas are usually destroyed – but there are interesting approaches that could be followed up, the authors speculate about influencing sensory airway representation, neurotransmitter therapy and monitoring of smoking cessation programs. So stroke may help to quit smoking but I think there are better ways to do that. Seems that Science won this race with Nature. Yea, yea.

Addendum

Don’t miss the follow up.