The selected examples of successful dosaging ranges are provided, while emphasizing the necessity of empirically determined dose-response relationships based on the precise parameters and conditions inherent to a specific hypothesis. This review provides a new, experimentally based compilation of species-specific dose selection for studies on the in vivo effects of nicotine.

Inheritance of a defect in a neuronal mechanism that regulates response to auditory stimuli was studied in nine families with multiple cases of schizophrenia. The defect, a decrease in the normal inhibition of the P50 auditoryevoked response to the second of paired stimuli, is associated with attentional disturbances in schizophrenia. Decreased P50 inhibition occurs not only in most schizophrenics, but also in many of their nonschizophrenic relatives, in a distribution consistent with inherited vulnerability for the illness. Neurobiological investigations in both humans and animal models indicated that decreased function of the ␣7-nicotinic cholinergic receptor could underlie the physiological defect. In the present study, a genome-wide linkage analysis, assuming autosomal dominant transmission, showed that the defect is linked [maximum logarithm of the odds (lod) score ‫؍‬ 5.3 with zero recombination] to a dinucleotide polymorphism at chromosome 15q13-14, the site of the ␣7-nicotinic receptor. Despite many schizophrenics' extremely heavy nicotine use, nicotinic receptors were not previously thought to be involved in schizophrenia. The linkage data thus provide unique new evidence that the ␣7-nicotinic receptor gene may be responsible for the inheritance of a pathophysiological aspect of the illness.

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A series of human and animal investigations has suggested that altered expression and function of the alpha7-nicotinic cholinergic receptor may be responsible for the auditory sensory gating deficit characterized in schizophrenia patients and their relatives as diminished suppression of an auditory-evoked response (P50) to repeated stimuli. This finding, in conjunction with evidence for familial transmission of this sensory gating deficit, suggests a pathogenic role of the gene for the alpha7-nicotinic receptor in schizophrenia. This article considers the possible effects of this dysfunction in a broader context. Not only is this dysfunction consistent with difficulties in sensory gating, but it might also predispose patients to problems with learning efficiency and accuracy. Such learning problems could underlie schizophrenia patients' delusional thinking, hallucinations, and social dysfunction. In addition, heavy smoking in many schizophrenia patients is consistent with the high concentration of nicotine necessary to activate the receptor and with the receptor's extremely rapid desensitization. Finally, the receptor's possible role in cell growth and differentiation should be considered in connection with developmental deficits and other cellular abnormalities in schizophrenia.

An alpha7 nicotinic agonist appears to have positive effects on neurocognition in persons with schizophrenia. Longer trials are needed to determine the clinical utility of this novel treatment strategy.

The effects of acetylcholine on both pyramidal neurons and interneurons in the area CA1 of the rat hippocampus were examined, using intracellular recording techniques in an in vitro slice preparation. In current-clamp mode, fast local application of acetylcholine (ACh) to the soma of inhibitory interneurons in stratum radiatum resulted in depolarization and rapid firing of action potentials. Under voltage-clamp, ACh produced fast, rapidly desensitizing inward currents that were insensitive to atropine but that were blocked by nanomolar concentrations of the nicotinic alpha7 receptor-selective antagonists alpha-bungarotoxin (alphaBgTx) and methyllycaconitine. Nicotinic receptor antagonists that are not selective for alpha7-containing receptors had little (mecamylamine) or no effect (dihydro-beta-erythroidine) on the ACh-induced currents. Glutamate receptor antagonists had no effect on the ACh-evoked response, indicating that the current was not mediated by presynaptic facilitation of glutamate release. However, the current could be desensitized almost completely by bath superfusion with 100 nM nicotine. In contrast to those actions on interneurons, application of ACh to the soma of CA1 pyramidal cells did not produce a detectable current. Radioligand-binding experiments with [125I]-alphaBgTx demonstrated that stratum radiatum interneurons express alpha7-containing nAChRs, and in situ hybridization revealed significant amounts of alpha7 mRNA. CA1 pyramidal cells did not show specific binding of [125I]-alphaBgTx and only low levels of alpha7 mRNA. These results suggest that, in addition to their proposed presynaptic role in modulating transmitter release, alpha7-containing nAChRs also may play a postsynaptic role in the excitation of hippocampal interneurons. By desensitizing these receptors, nicotine may disrupt this action and indirectly excite pyramidal neurons by reducing GABAergic inhibition.

Although linkage disequilibrium with other genetic alterations cannot be excluded, the CHRNA7 core promoter variants, found in this study, may contribute to a common pathophysiologic feature of schizophrenia.

Objective We have used a custom 1,536-SNP array to interrogate 94 functionally relevant candidate genes for schizophrenia and identify associations with 12 heritable neurophysiological and neurocognitive endophenotypes collected as part of the Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS). Method Variance-component association analyses of 534 genotyped subjects from 130 families were conducted using Merlin. A novel bootstrap Total Significance Test was also developed to overcome the limitations of existing genomic multiple testing methods and robustly demonstrate the presence of significant associations in the context of complex family data and possible population stratification effects. Results Associations were observed for 46 genes of potential functional significance with 3 SNPs at p<10−4, 27 SNPs at p<10−3, and 147 SNPs at p<0.01. The bootstrap analyses confirmed that the 47 SNP-endophenotype combinations with the strongest evidence of association significantly exceeded (p=0.001) that expected by chance alone with 93% of these findings expected to be true. Many of the genes interact on a molecular level, and eight genes displayed evidence for pleiotropy (e.g., NRG1 and ERBB4), revealing associations with four or more endophenotypes. Our results collectively support a strong role for genes related to glutamate signaling in mediating schizophrenia susceptibility. Conclusions This study supports the use of relevant endophenotypes and the bootstrap Total Significance Test for the identification of genetic variation underlying the etiology of schizophrenia. In addition, the observation of extensive pleiotropy for some genes and singular associations for others in our data suggests alternative, independent pathways mediating pathogenesis in the “group of schizophrenias”.