Effects of nicotine on response inhibition and interference control.
Nicotine is a cholinergic agonist with known pro-cognitive effects in the domains of alerting and orienting attention. However, its effects on attentional top-down functions such as response inhibition and interference control are less well characterised. Here, we investigated the effects of 7 mg transdermal nicotine on performance on a battery of response inhibition and interference control tasks. A sample of N = 44 healthy adult non-smokers performed antisaccade, stop signal, Stroop, go/no-go, flanker, shape matching and Simon tasks, as well as the attentional network test (ANT) and a continuous performance task (CPT). Nicotine was administered in a within-subjects, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, with order of drug administration counterbalanced. Relative to placebo, nicotine led to significantly shorter reaction times on a prosaccade task and on CPT hits but did not significantly improve inhibitory or interference control performance on any task. Instead, nicotine had a negative influence in increasing the interference effect on the Simon task. Nicotine did not alter inter-individual associations between reaction times on congruent trials and error rates on incongruent trials on any task. Finally, there were effects involving order of drug administration, suggesting practice effects but also beneficial nicotine effects when the compound was administered first. Overall, our findings support previous studies showing positive effects of nicotine on basic attentional functions but do not provide direct evidence for an improvement of top-down cognitive control through acute administration of nicotine at this dose in healthy non-smokers.
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany. ulrich.ettinger@uni-bonn.de.
Ulrich
U
Ettinger
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany.
Eliana
E
Faiola
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany.
Anna-Maria
AM
Kasparbauer
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany.
Nadine
N
Petrovsky
Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Laboratory, CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Raymond C K
RC
Chan
Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Roman
R
Liepelt
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Veena
V
Kumari
D000279:Administration, Cutaneous; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000187:drug effects; D003071:Cognition / Q000187:drug effects; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000187:drug effects; D009538:Nicotine / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000494:pharmacology*; D018722:Nicotinic Agonists / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000187:drug effects; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000187:drug effects; D012438:Saccades / Q000187:drug effects; D057190:Stroop Test; D055815:Young Adult
D018722:Nicotinic Agonists; D009538:Nicotine
Acetylcholine; Attention; Cognition; Executive function; Inhibitory control; Nicotine