Smokers tend to have thinner brain cortex

Using detailed MRI brain scans, careful image analysis and statistical models, researchers analysed how a person’s smoking habit was linked with the thickness of the brain’s cortex.

Professor Joanna Wardlaw, Director of the Brain Research Imaging Centre at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The effects of smoking on the lungs and heart are well known, but our study shows that there are important effects on the brain as well, another good reason for not smoking”.