Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND), San Francisco VA Medical Center, 4150 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2012 Apr 1;122(1-2):105-11. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2011.09.019. Epub 2011 Oct 10.
The majority of studies investigating the neurocognitive consequences of chronic smoking have been conducted with adults 60 years and older. Therefore, the scope of neurocognitive dysfunction associated with chronic cigarette smoking in middle age (i.e., 30-60 age range) has not been fully delineated.
Twenty-seven (44±9 years of age; 4 females) non-smoking and 30 smoking (49±8 years of age; 4 females) participants completed a comprehensive neurocognitive battery and measures of fine motor dexterity and postural stability. All participants were free of biomedical or psychiatric conditions that may have influenced neurocognitive and motor function.
Smokers performed significantly worse than non-smokers on the following domains: auditory-verbal and visuospatial learning, visuospatial memory, cognitive efficiency, executive skills, general intelligence, processing speed, fine motor dexterity and postural stability. The differences between smokers and non-smokers evidenced moderate to strong effect sizes and were not mediated by age, education, vocational level, estimated verbal intelligence or alcohol consumption. In smokers, a greater number of lifetime years of smoking was related to poorer performance on measures of cognitive efficiency, processing speed and visuospatial skills.
Results from this middle-aged cohort replicated previous research and provides novel findings indicating that chronic smoking was associated with inferior performance on measures of general intelligence, visuospatial learning and memory and fine motor dexterity. Research that relates measures of neurobiological function/integrity to neurocognition is needed to better understand the mechanisms contributing to the poorer performance across multiple domains demonstrated by smokers.
大多数研究慢性吸烟对神经认知的影响都是针对 60 岁及以上的成年人进行的。因此，中年（即 30-60 岁年龄范围）与慢性吸烟相关的神经认知功能障碍的范围尚未完全确定。
27 名不吸烟（年龄 44±9 岁；女性 4 名）和 30 名吸烟（年龄 49±8 岁；女性 4 名）参与者完成了全面的神经认知测试以及精细运动灵巧度和姿势稳定性的测试。所有参与者均无可能影响神经认知和运动功能的生物医学或精神疾病。
与不吸烟者相比，吸烟者在以下领域的表现明显更差：听觉言语和视空间学习、视空间记忆、认知效率、执行技能、一般智力、处理速度、精细运动灵巧度和姿势稳定性。吸烟者和不吸烟者之间的差异具有中等到强的效应大小，且不受年龄、教育程度、职业水平、估计言语智力或酒精摄入量的影响。在吸烟者中，吸烟的终生年限与认知效率、处理速度和视空间技能测量结果的表现较差相关。
这项中年队列的研究结果复制了之前的研究结果，并提供了新的发现，表明慢性吸烟与一般智力、视空间学习和记忆以及精细运动灵巧度的测量结果较差有关。需要开展将神经生物学功能/完整性测量与神经认知相关联的研究，以更好地了解导致吸烟者在多个领域表现较差的机制。
