Journal article

Positive effects of nicotine on cognition: the deployment of attention for prospective memory

JM Rusted, R Sawyer, C Jones, SL Trawley, NL Marchant

PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY | SPRINGER | Published : 2009

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 ..

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