Effects of transdermal nicotine on attention and memory in healthy elderly non-smokers

Min, Sung Kil; In-Won, Moon; Ko, Ryeo Won; Shin, Ho Sang

doi:10.1007/s002130100899

Cited by 55 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Both drugs reversed scopolamine-induced impairment of serial learning (Sitaram et al, 1978). Within a healthy, nonsmoking sample, nicotine has improved short-term verbal memory functions (Min et al, 2001).…”

Section: Cholinergic Agonistsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Other studies showed that nicotine improved attention and memory in patients with AD or Parkinson's disease (Min et al, 2001;Vidal, 1996). In studies with healthy volunteers, cholinergic enhancers (for example, arecoline, a muscarinic agonist, and choline, a precursor of acetylcholine) have been tested for effects on memory performance after administration of the cholinergic antagonist methscopolamine.…”

Section: Cholinergic Agonistsmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Psychoactive Drugs and Pilot Performance: A Comparison of Nicotine, Donepezil, and Alcohol Effects

Mumenthaler

Yesavage

Taylor

et al. 2003

Neuropsychopharmacol

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The cholinergic system plays a major role in cognitive abilities that are essential to piloting an aircraft: attention, learning, and memory. In previous studies, drugs that enhance the cholinergic system through different pharmacologic mechanisms have shown beneficial effects on cognition; but dissimilar cognitive measures were used and samples were not comparable. A comparison within the same cognitive tasks, within comparable samples appears desirable. Toward this aim, we compared effect sizes (ES) of performance-enhancing doses of nicotine (a nicotinic receptor agonist) and donepezil (an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor) as found in our prior work on pilot performance. We also compared cholinergic ES to those of performance-impairing doses of alcohol. In three randomized, placebo-controlled trials, we assessed the flight performance of aircraft pilots in a Frasca 141 simulator, testing I: the acute effects of nicotine gum 2 mg; II: the effects of administration of 5 mg donepezil/day for 30 days; and III: the acute and 8 h-carryover effects of alcohol after a target peak BAC of 0.10%. We calculated the ES of nicotine, donepezil, and alcohol on a flight summary score and on four flight component scores. Compared to placebo, nicotine and donepezil significantly improved, while alcohol significantly impaired overall flight performance: ES (nicotine) ¼ 0.80; ES (donepezil) ¼ 1.02; ES (alcohol acute) ¼ À3.66; ES (alcohol 8 h) ¼ À0.82. Both cholinergic drugs showed the largest effects on flight tasks requiring sustained visual attention. Although the two tested cholinergic drugs have different pharmacologic mechanisms, their effects on flight performance were similar in kind and size. The beneficial effects of the cholinergic drugs on overall flight performance were large and the absolute (ie nondirectional) sizes were about one-fourth of the absolute ES of acute alcohol intoxication and roughly the same as the absolute 8 h-carryover ES of alcohol.

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Section: Cholinergic Agonistsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Cholinergic Agonistsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Psychoactive Drugs and Pilot Performance: A Comparison of Nicotine, Donepezil, and Alcohol Effects

Mumenthaler

Yesavage

Taylor

et al. 2003

Neuropsychopharmacol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Possibly, also the decline of memory functions observed during normal aging (Light, 1991;Spencer and Raz, 1995;NavehBenjamin, 2000;Kukolja et al, 2009) is based on a beginning cholinergic deficit (Bartus et al, 1982;Mesulam, 1996;Cohen et al, 2006;Schliebs and Arendt, 2006). Supporting this notion, nicotinic stimulation has been shown to enhance memory performance in healthy elderly adults in several tasks including verbal and object learning, delayed recall, and word retrieval (Howe and Price, 2001;Min et al, 2001). Since nicotine was applied chronically in these studies, the effects on encoding and retrieval were not distinguished.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cholinergic Stimulation Enhances Neural Activity Associated with Encoding but Reduces Neural Activity Associated with Retrieval in Humans

Kukolja¹,

Thiel²,

Fink³

2009

Journal of Neuroscience

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The cerebral cholinergic system is centrally involved in memory formation. Studies in rodents suggest that cholinergic stimulation may facilitate encoding of new information but may interfere with retrieval. We investigated the effect of cholinergic stimulation on encoding and retrieval of episodic memory in humans. We also tested whether the putative benefit of cholinergic stimulation on memory function depends on individual baseline performance. Since such effects were expected to be greatest in an older population resulting from an age-related degeneration of the cholinergic system, we recruited 22 healthy older subjects (51-68 years) for an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. In two separate scanning sessions, subjects encoded and retrieved items and their spatial context under cholinergic stimulation or placebo with the acetylcholine-esterase inhibitor physostigmine or saline being administered intravenously in a double-blind cross-over design. Baseline performance was recorded at a separate occasion without scanning. Cholinergic stimulation enhanced neural activity for successful versus unsuccessful spatial context encoding in the right hippocampus but reduced activity for successful versus unsuccessful spatial context retrieval in the right amygdala. These data may bridge the gap between rodent and human studies by showing that also in man cholinergic stimulation enhances encoding but interferes with retrieval on a neural level. Furthermore, baseline performance negatively correlated with the effect of cholinergic stimulation. Thus, participants who were worse at baseline benefited more from cholinergic stimulation than those who had better baseline values, indicating that a cholinergic deficit contributes to the memory decline even in healthy older subjects.

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“…Administration of nicotine to abstinent smokers improves general alertness, attention, and vigilance [4,5]. Nicotine improves performance on vigilance tasks [6,7], inhibition of prepotent responses [8], and verbal learning [9] in nonsmokers. Effects such as these, however, are thought to reflect an influence on general alertness, rather than the primary influence of specific cognitive domains [10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuropsychological function in patients with a single gene mutation associated with autosomal dominant nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy

Wood¹,

Saling²,

Fedi³

et al. 2010

Epilepsy & Behavior

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a b s t r a c tAutosomal dominant nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (ADNFLE) is a nonlesional condition associated with mutation of the gene coding for the a4 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). The nAChR modulates aspects of memory and attention. We examined the neuropsychological phenotype of ADNFLE, with a particular emphasis on understanding the impact on frontal lobe functions. We used standard clinical tests as well as focused measures of frontal lobe function in a well-defined group of patients with ADN-FLE. Their performance was compared with that of a group of age-, sex-, and education-matched control participants. Patients with ADNFLE showed impairments on tasks requiring cognitive flexibility against a background of well-preserved intellectual abilities. In accord with existing research, verbal memory impairments were identified in the patient group; the level of impairment on these tasks correlated with disease-related factors. In our study of ADNFLE associated with one mutation, cognitive flexibility appears to be the core cognitive deficit.Crown

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Effects of transdermal nicotine on attention and memory in healthy elderly non-smokers

Abstract: These results suggest that nicotine of lower plasma level can improve short-term verbal memory functions in non-smoking or nicotine-naïve healthy elderly people and that some effects are dependent on nicotine plasma levels.

Cited by 55 publications

References 2 publications

Psychoactive Drugs and Pilot Performance: A Comparison of Nicotine, Donepezil, and Alcohol Effects

Psychoactive Drugs and Pilot Performance: A Comparison of Nicotine, Donepezil, and Alcohol Effects

Cholinergic Stimulation Enhances Neural Activity Associated with Encoding but Reduces Neural Activity Associated with Retrieval in Humans

Neuropsychological function in patients with a single gene mutation associated with autosomal dominant nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy

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