Effects of Nicotine Gum on Short-Term Memory

Summary

To investigate the effects of nicotine on memory function, 20 subjects (10 non-smokers and 10 smokers who had been allowed to smoke normally until testing) attended the laboratory at their “preferred nicotine level” and completed a short-term memory task (memory scanning) at set points for 4 hours after the administration of 2mg or 0mg (placebo) nicotine polacrilex gum. The results suggest that nicotine enhanced memory reaction time performance (P>0.01) when subjects were probed for information already present in short-term memory (correct positive responses) but had no effect on reaction time when the information was absent from memory (correct negative responses). It is suggested that nicotine facilitates the processing of stimulus information in short-term memory.