Apr 21, 2014 11:53 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Solving puzzles and or playing board games could help reduce nicotine cravings, according to a recent study.

American researchers found that incorporating new, exciting "self-expanding" activities into a routine could significantly benefit someone who is trying to quit smoking.

"Our study reveals for the first time using brain imaging that engaging in exciting or what we call 'self-expanding' activities, such as puzzle-solving, games, or hobbies with one's partner, appears to reduce craving for nicotine," Arthur Aron, a Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook University, said in a statement. "The self-expansion activities yielded significantly greater activation in a major reward region of the brain, which is associated with addictive behaviors, than did non-expanding conditions. This suggests such activities may be a major new route to help people reduce the desire to smoke."

The team of researchers, from Stony Brook University, Idaho State University, the American Cancer Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Georgia and Brown University, report what they discovered in the paper, "An fMRI study of nicotine-deprived smokers' reactivity to smoking cues during novel/exciting activity."

Researchers based their conclusions on a neuroimaging study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. The fMRI scanning, completed at Stony Brook University, looked at the brains of nicotine-deprived smokers who engaged in a series of two-player cooperative games with their relationship partners during the actual time of the scanning.

For the study, the team tested their theory with the use of fMRI during the cooperative game playing. The games were randomized between expanding and non-expanding activities. The study's expanding games offered new choices and more targets for study participants and were significantly more exciting.

Aron said future research could focus on specific aspects of the self-expanding activities that produce this effect, as well as test the use of self-expansion activities in clinical interventions for smoking cessation.

The findings were recently published in PLOS One.

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