Experts are calling out a vape pen with ‘scary’ nicotine levels that teens love — here’s how it affects the brain

Business Insider, April 19, 2018
With comments from Nicholas Chadi

“The Juul is a new trend I’m afraid,” Nicholas Chadi, a clinical pediatrics fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, said at the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s annual conference last week. “We get calls from parents across Boston wondering what to do about this.”

The crux of the problem centers on what nicotine does to the teen brain — especially in an area called the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in emotional control, decision making, and impulse regulation.

Brain imaging studies of adolescents suggest that those who begin smoking regularly at a young age have markedly reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex and perform less well on tasks related to memory and attention compared to people who don’t smoke. Chadi said these brain changes are also linked with increased sensitivity to other drugs as well as greater impulsivity. Read more