Abstract
Rationale
Human and animal studies over the last two decades report that nicotine can improve cognitive performance. Prospective memory (PM), the retrieval and implementation of a previously encoded intention, is also improved by pre-administration of nicotine. As with other nicotine effects, however, predicting precisely how and when nicotine improves the processes engaged by PM has proved less straightforward.
Objective
We present two studies that explore the source of nicotine’s enhancement of PM. Experiment 1 tests for effects of nicotine on preparatory attention (PA) for PM target detection. Experiment 2 asks whether nicotine enhances processing of the perceptual attributes of the PM targets.
Materials and methods
Young adult non-smokers matched on baseline performance measures received either 1 mg nicotine or matched placebo via nasal spray. Volunteers completed novel PM tasks at 15 min post-administration.
Results
Experiment 1 confirmed that pre-administration of nicotine to non-smokers improved detection rate for prospective memory targets presented during an attention-demanding ongoing task. There was no relationship between PM performance and measures of preparatory attention. In experiment 2, salient targets were more likely to be detected than non-salient targets, but nicotine did not confer any additional advantage to salient targets.
Conclusion
The present study suggests that nicotinic stimulation does not work to enhance perceptual salience of target stimuli (experiment 2), nor does it work through better deployment of preparatory working attention (experiment 1). An alternative explanation that nicotine promotes PM detection by facilitating disengagement from the ongoing task is suggested as a future line of investigation.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Non-smokers were defined as never-smoked or not smoked (cigarettes) for at least 5 years.
A central tenet of the multi-process model of PM is the argument that embedding the digit in this way precludes the automatic detection of the target as a by-product of ongoing task performance (McDaniel and Einstein 2000). According to these authors, salience promotes automatic detection, so automatic access will be confined to the salient stimulus condition.
References
Bond A, Lader MH (1974) The use of analogue scales in rating subjective feelings. Br J Med Psychol 47:211–218
Craik FIM, Anderson N, Kerr S, Li K (1995) Memory changes in normal aging. In: Baddeley AD, Wilson B, Watts FN (eds) Handbook of memory disorders. Wiley, New York, pp 211–241
Edwards JA, Wesnes K, Warburton DM, Gale A (1985) Evidence of more rapid stimulus evaluation following cigarette smoking. Addict Behav 10:113–126
Einstein GO, McDaniel MA (2005) Prospective memory: multiple retrieval processes. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 14:286–290
Furey ML, Pietrini P, Haxby JV (2000) Cholinergic enhancement and increased selectivity of perceptual processing during working memory. Science 290:2315–2319
Giessing C, Thiel CM, Rosler F, Fink GR (2006) The modulatory effects of nicotine on parietal cortex activity in a cued target detection task depend on cue reliability. Neuroscience 131:853–864
Green A, Ellis KA, Ellis J, Bartholomeusz CF, Ilic S, Croft RJ, Phan KL, Nathan PJ (2005) Muscarinic and nicotinic receptor modulation of object and spatial n-back working memory in humans. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 81:575–584
Hahn B, Ross TJ, Yang Y, Kim I, Huestis MA, Stein EA (2007) Nicotine enhances visuospatial attention by deactivating areas of the resting brain default network. J Neurosci 27:3477–3489
Henry JD, MacLeod MS, Phillips LH, Crawford JR (2004) A meta-analytic review of prospective memory and aging. Psychol Aging 19:27–39
Hicks JL, Marsh RL, Cook GI (2005) Task interference in time-based, event-based, and dual intention prospective memory conditions. J Mem Lang 53:430–444
Holmes AD, Chenery HJ, Copland DA (2008) Transdermal nicotine modulates strategy-based attentional semantic processing in non-smokers. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol 11:389–399
Kerr JS, Sherwood N, Hindmarch I (1991) Separate and combined effects of the social drugs on psychomotor performance. Psychopharmacology 104:113–119
Kliegel M, Jäger T (2006) Delayed-execute prospective memory performance: the effects of age and working memory. Dev Neuropsychol 30:819–843
Kliegel M, Martin M, McDaniel MA, Phoillips LH (2007) Adult age differences in errand planning: the role of task familiarity and cognitive resources. Exp Aging Res 33:145–161
Kozak R, Bruno JP, Sarter M (2006) Augmented prefrontal acetylcholine release during challenged attentional performance. Cereb Cortex 16:9–17
Kumari V, Postma P (2005) Nicotine use in schizophrenia: the self medication hypothesis. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 29:1021
Lawrence NS, Ross TJ, Stein EA (2002) Cognitive mechanisms of nicotine on visual attention. Neuron 36:539–548
Levin ED, McClernon JF, Rezvani AH (2006) Nicotinic effects on cognitive function: behavioral characterization, pharmacological specification, and anatomic localization. Psychopharmacology 184:523–539
Logie R, Maylor E, Della Sala S, Smith G (2004) Working memory in event- and time-based prospective memory tasks: effects of secondary demand and age. Eur J Cogn Psychol 16:441–456
Marchant NL, Trawley S, Rusted JM (2008) Prospective memory or prospective attention: physiological and pharmacological support for an attentional model. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol 11:401–411
Marsh RL, Hicks JL (1998) Event-based prospective memory and executive control of working memory. J Exper Psychol Lear Mem Cogn 24:336–349
Marsh RL, Hicks JL, Cook GI (2005) On the relationship between effort toward an ongoing task and cue detection in event-based prospective memory. J Exper Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 31:68–75
Marsh RL, Cook GI, Hicks JL (2006) An analysis of prospective memory. Psychol Learn Motiv 46:115–153
Maylor EA (1993) Aging and forgetting in prospective and retrospective memory tasks. Psychol Aging 8:420–428
McDaniel MA, Einstein GO (2000) Strategic and automatic processes in prospective memory retrieval: a multiprocess framework. Appl Cogn Psychol 14:S127–S144
McDaniel MA, Guynn MJ, Einstein GO, Breneiser J (2004) Cue-focused and reflexive-associative processes in prospective memory retrieval. JEP: Learn Mem Cogn 30:605–614
McNerney MW, West R (2007) An imperfect relationship between prospective memory and the prospective interference effect. Mem Cognit 35:275–282
Meinke A, Thiel CM, Fink GR (2006) Effects of nicotine on visuo-spatial selective attention as indexed by event-related potentials. Neuroscience 141:201–212
Parikh V, Man K, Decker MW, Sarter M (2008) Glutamategic contributions to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist-evoked cholinergic transients in the prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci 28:3769–3780
Phillips JM, McAlonan K, Robb WGK, Brown VJ (2000) Cholinergic neurotransmission influences covert orientation of visuospatial attention in the rat. Psychopharmacology 150:112–116
Robbins TW (2002) The 5-choice serial reaction time task: behavioural pharmacology and functional neurochemistry. Psychopharmacology 163:362–380
Rusted JM, Alvares T (2008) Nicotine effects on retrieval-induced forgetting are not attributable to changes in arousal. Psychopharmacology 196:83–92
Rusted JM, Trawley S (2006) Comparable effects of nicotine in smokers and nonsmokers on a prospective memory task. Neuropsychopharmacology 31:1545–1549
Rusted JM, Trawley S, Kettle G, Walker H (2005) Nicotine improves memory for delayed intentions. Psychopharmacology 182:355–365
Rycroft N, Rusted JM, Hutton SB (2006) The antisaccade task as an index of sustained goal activation in working memory: modulation by nicotine. Psychopharmacology 188:521–529
Sarter M, Hasselmo ME, Bruno JP, Givens B (2005) Unraveling the attentional functions of cortical cholinergic inputs: interactions between signal-driven and cognitive modulation of signal detection. Brain Res Rev 48:98–111
Schaeffer EG, Kozak MV, Sagness K (1998) The role of enactment in prospective remembering. Mem Cogn 26:644–650
Schneider NG, Lunell E, Olmstead RE, Fagerstrom K (1996) Clinical pharmacokinetics of nasal nicotine delivery. Clin Pharmacokinet 31:65–80
Smith RE (2003) The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance. J Exper Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 29:347–361
Smith RE, Bayen UJ (2004) A multinomial model of event-based prospective memory. J Exper Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 30:756–777
Smith RE, Hunt RR, McVay JC, McConnell MD (2007) The cost of event-based prospective memory: salient target events. J Exper Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 33:734–746
Thayer RE (1989) The biopsychology of mood and arousal. Oxford University Press, New York
West RJ, Hack S (1991) Effects of cigarettes on memory search and subjective ratings. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 38:281
West RJ, Krompinger J, Bowry R (2005) Disruptions of preparatory attention contribute to failures of prospective memory. Psychon Bull Rev 12:502–507
Acknowledgements
We thank McNeil AB, Helsingborg, Sweden for providing the nasal sprays.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rusted, J.M., Sawyer, R., Jones, C. et al. Positive effects of nicotine on cognition: the deployment of attention for prospective memory. Psychopharmacology 202, 93–102 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-008-1320-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-008-1320-7