A comparison of the attentional and consolidation hypotheses for the facilitation of memory by nicotine

Abstract

Studies examining facilitation of human memory by the administration of nicotine have given equivocal results and it has been argued that the positive findings on memory may have resulted indirectly from an effect on attention, rather than from a direct effect on memory storage. This study compared the "attentional" and the "mnemonic" hypotheses directly, by using both immediate and delayed recall tasks in a verbal free recall study, in which volunteers smoked on a fixed regime during presentation of a 32 word list (namely, one puff after each of eight 4-word blocks). The serial position curve for immediate recall demonstrated a significant improvement on the later blocks of the list (an attentional effect) when volunteers smoked a nicotine-containing cigarette. However, improved performance was found for items at the beginning of the list on the delayed recall measure and this improvement was significant on the first block of 4 words. Since nicotine input had been taken after presentation of this information, the results demonstrate post-learning facilitation of memory by nicotine.

Acute effects of cigarettes in non‐deprived smokers on memory, calculation and executive functions

“…Smoking or nicotine administration has been reported to improve memory (Krebs et al, 1994;Warburton et al, 1992;Hale et al, 1999), attention (Kassel 1997;Bates et al, 1995;Sherwood et al, 1992;Baker and Walsh, 1996) and motor performance (Sherwood, 1995). However, most of these previous studies controlled the dose of nicotine, and required subjects to refrain from smoking before the experiment, as described in the introduction.…”

Verbal memory performance improved via an acute administration of D‐amphetamine

“…For instance, a facilitating effect of CNS stimulants, such as amphetamines, has been demonstrated on long-term storage in animals on a variety of tasks (Krivanek and McGaugh, 1969 Dawson, 1971). The beneficial effects of stimulants in humans, however, have been examined infrequently (Roozendaal, 2002;Warburton et al, 1992) and most of the research has been conducted with drugs that impair memory, such as bendodiazepines (BuffetJerrott and Stewart, 2002;Curran, 1991Curran, , 2000.…”

Cholinergic Control of Cognitive Resources

“…In a series of studies in our laboratory, we have obtained positive effects of post trial nicotine with unrelated word lists, both when volun teers were encouraged to form associative links between those items [23], and when volunteers were encouraged to determine their own encoding strategy [25], A more critical manipulation which we have exam ined is the effect of a distractor task completed imme diately after list presentation and during the period of nicotine intake. An intervening distractor task at this point eliminates the post-trial facilitation effect [25] and its effect is related to the processing demands of the task [Rusted et al, in prep.].…”