The 55th Nebraska Symposium on The Motivational Impact of Nicotine and its Role in Tobacco Use
Coordinated by: Rick Bevins, Ph.D. (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) & Tony Caggiula (University of Pittsburgh)
This year the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation will address smoking and nicotine dependence�the leading cause of preventable deaths in the US. Indeed, 21% of the adults in the US can be considered smokers. With these 44.5 million smokers consuming over 367 billion cigarettes a year an estimated 440,000 people die prematurely from smoking-related diseases each year. This smoking behavior is estimated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to cost over $167 billion a year in health-related expenses and lost worker productivity due to early deaths. Clearly, chronic tobacco use is costly from an individual and societal perspective and the health and economic benefits of quitting are enormous. In recent years there have been several significant discoveries into the motivational effects of nicotine and its potential contribution to tobacco use. These recent insights have occurred at the behavioral, cognitive, and neurobiological level and span "bench" research to "bedside" application. Accordingly, we have gathered leading researchers in the field of nicotine dependence and tobacco use to discuss these recent advances in research, theory, and application. In doing so, we hope not only to start generating a more coherent and cohesive picture of these motivational effects of nicotine, but to critically discuss new intervention and prevention approaches to tobacco use.
Please accept this invitation to participate in this integrative and thought provoking meeting. Attendance is FREE (i.e., no registration fee). We also encourage you to present some of your own cutting-edge drug abuse research at the poster session (link to posters & registration). Although the Symposium focuses on nicotine dependence, the interests of the participants clearly include drug abuse in general. As such, we encourage submission of posters on drug abuse broadly defined from any level of analysis.
Scheduled speakers include:
Rick Bevins, Ph.D. (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Anthony Caggiula, Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh)
John Dani, Ph.D. (Baylor College of Medicine)
Linda Dwoskin, Ph.D. (University of Kentucky)
Athina Markou, Ph.D. (The Scripps Research Institute)
Kenneth Perkins, Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh)
Marina Picciotto, Ph.D. (Yale University School of Medicine)
Jed Rose, Ph.D. (Duke Center for Nicotine & Smoking Cessation Research)
Stephen Tiffany, Ph.D. (University of Utah School of Medicine)
The Symposium will include a poster session and will be followed by a published volume.