A 2022 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that 67.7% of adults who smoked said they wanted to quit smoking, and 53.5% said they had tried to quit in the past year. Yet less than one in 10 adults who smoke cigarettes succeed in quitting each year. Research led by UC Irvine has revealed a new technique that can reduce the subjective experience of craving cigarettes and the brain activity associated with it. In announcing the team’s publication about their discovery in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology on LinkedIn, lead author and UC Irvine assistant research psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia wrote: “Name it to tame it! Putting feelings into words has long been known to calm emotions. Our latest paper shows that putting what we crave into words can help calm cravings.” The technique, called “cue labeling,” is the subject of this episode of The UC Irvine Podcast. Tabibnia will explain why it’s so hard for people to quit smoking, what cue labeling is and how it can help. She’s a neuroscientist who conducts her research in the Department of Psychology in the School of Social Ecology, and this study was supported in part by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Confliction & Catharsis,” the music for this episode, was provided by Asher Fulero via the audio library in YouTube Studio.