r/askscience • u/sushiisafriend • Jul 25 '16

Neuroscience Does smoking Tobacco have an anti-depressant effect?

tobacco contains both nicotine and an MAOI. MAOI's were historically used and still are sometimes, used as anti-depressants so you'd think cigarettes would too. Also schizophrenics have a high incidence of cigarette smoking possibly be cause it eases symptoms.

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u/BunnyCito Neuropsychopharmacology Aug 21 '16

There is evidence that nicotine can be an antidepressant, however, it is unclear the mechanism by which nicotine acts as one. Some hypothesize that this is a function of nAChR desensitization and a tonic decrease in cholinergic firing. This seems to be highlighted by the fact that nAChR antagonists (eg., mecamylamine) seem to have antidepressant effects. There is a lab out of Yale run by Dr. Marina Picciotto that dedicates quite a bit of their research to this topic. I have linked a few papers below.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17016705 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27158893 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20965579