Nicotine differentially modulates antisaccade eye-gaze away from emotional stimuli in nonsmokers stratified by pre-task baseline performance

Abstract

Rationale and objective Studies indicate that nicotine enhances some aspects of attention and executive functioning and attenuates the attentional salience of emotionally negative distractors. The purpose of this study was to assess whether nicotine can enhance executive control over prepotent responses in emotional contexts in nonsmokers and whether such enhancement is greater in individuals with low baseline performance. Methods The antisaccade task (AST) measures the inhibition of the tendency to glance in the direction of the onset of a visual stimulus and thus is an index of control over prepotent responses. Ten male and 14 female nonsmokers wore a nicotine and placebo patch on counterbalanced days that included emotional picture primes and targets. Results There were significant beneficial effects of nicotine on antisaccade reaction time (RT). These beneficial effects occurred in individuals with poor- and average-baseline performance, but not in high baseline performers. In slow baseline-RT individuals nicotine reduced RTs associated with negative targets in the left visual field (VF) and reduced RTs associated with positive and neutral targets in the right VF. In contrast, in the average baseline group, nicotine reduced RTs for positive targets in both VFs and neutral targets in the left VF. Conclusions The results suggest that nicotine may produce its effects by enhancing executive functions and that the differential effects as a function of VF, target emotion, and group may also reflect lateralized differences in the effects of nicotine on brain reactivity to emotional stimuli.

Moderation of nicotine effects on covert orienting of attention tasks by poor placebo performance and cue validity

“…However, baseline-dependent effects of nicotine patch in nonsmokers (Wachter & Gilbert, 2013) are consistent with the view that there may be inherent self-medication effects of nicotine for low placebo-performance individuals. FTND, cotinine, or age covariates did not interact with reported main effects and interactions.…”

“…Previous research has noted baseline-dependent effects of nicotine (Perkins 1999; Wachter and Gilbert, 2013). Rate dependency is seen with nicotine and other stimulants that can increase low baseline rates and decrease high baseline rates of performance (McMillan and Leander, 1976).…”

The Psychology of the Smoker

“…Individuals with poor cognitive performance when nicotine deprived benefit more from the effects of nicotine than do individuals with higher baseline performance. This baseline-dependent effect of nicotine on cognitive enhancement has also been found in nonsmokers [35].…”

“…Baseline-dependent individual differences in the effects of nicotine have been observed for many CoS construct indices, such as suboptimal cognitive performance as assessed with objective, computer-based cognitive tasks including memory, WM and sustained attention [34,35], which are listed as RDoc CoS indices [4]. Individuals with poor cognitive performance when nicotine deprived benefit more from the effects of nicotine than do individuals with higher baseline performance.…”

“…items, goals and strategies) in a form that has limited capacity and resists interference [4]. However, cognitive control processes associated with smoker-nonsmoker differences and the beneficial effects of nicotine [35] appear to be distinguishable from WM by virtue of the fact that they involve processes that are not present in WM, including motivation, goal selection, motor inhibition and error conflict monitoring [4]. Differentiation of and interactions among all RDoC research domains and their subconstructs in differing social and affective contexts are likely to be important in understanding factors that promote smoking and the development of new efficacious smoking interventions.…”