Nicotine AddictionCigarette addiction is responsible for more than four million deaths each year. The question most people ask is: why don't people just put down their cigarette? Well, the answer to this often asked question is nicotine. Nicotine is a neurotransmitter that targets certain receptors in the brain. It is a chemical messenger that induces feelings of pleasure. When a person takes a drag from a cigarette, they are ingesting harmful chemicals that can cause cancer and other serious health threats. They inhale these chemicals just to get one thing and one thing only, nicotine. Recovering from addiction becomes more and more difficult with every puff of a cigarette. When nicotine is consumed, it communicates with the brain and is absorbed by receptor molecules. Doctors have conducted hundreds of experimental studies on the human brain for years to help understand how these chemicals neurologically affect the brain and which areas of the brain are affected. . This goal has not yet been achieved due to the large number of receptor cells in the brain. In a study at the California Institute of Technology by Andrew Tapper, Professor Allan Collins of the University of Colorado, several colleagues and Henry A. Lester, Bren Professor of Biology at Caltech University, found that nicotine affects a small subunit of the brain. called alpha four. This subunit of the brain increases levels of pleasure, response, awareness and increases tolerance to multiple doses of nicotine. Many people don't know what nicotine does in the brain. Here's how it works when nicotine reacts with brain cells. It creates a nerve impulse that chemically jumps across a space between two different nerve cells. This action is called a synapse. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine is used in this process and is used to affect specific receptors in the brain targeting postsynaptic nerve cells. After this process, the brain's feel-good messenger, dopamine, is released. This chemical is released into the brain, creating an extremely intense effect. Acetylcholine is then supposed to reduce dopamine once its task is accomplished. The drug disguises itself as acetylcholine, causing the dopamine release process to last minutes rather than milliseconds. In several laboratory studies performed on mice in the 1990s, results concluded that nicotine also affects subunits in the brain called beta two. Knowing how this drug affects many different subunits shows how complicated it is to find a cure for addiction to this drug..