Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany.
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2019 Jul;236(7):2259-2271. doi: 10.1007/s00213-019-05223-1. Epub 2019 Mar 14.
The non-selective nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonist nicotine has been argued to improve attention via enhanced filtering of irrelevant stimuli. Here, we tested this hypothesis in the context of smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEMs), an oculomotor function previously shown to improve with nicotine in some but not all studies.
In order to test whether nicotine improves performance particularly when the inhibition of distracting stimuli is required, SPEM was elicited in conditions with or without peripheral distractors. Additionally, different target frequencies were employed in order to parametrically vary general processing demands on the SPEM system.
Healthy adult non-smokers (N = 18 females, N = 13 males) completed a horizontal sinusoidal SPEM task at different target frequencies (0.2 Hz, 0.4 Hz, 0.6 Hz) in the presence or absence of peripheral distractors in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design using a 2 mg nicotine gum.
Nicotine increased peak pursuit gain relative to placebo (p < .001), but an interaction with distractor condition (p = .001) indicated that this effect was most pronounced in the presence of distractors. Catch-up saccade frequency was reduced by nicotine (p = .01), particularly at higher target frequencies (two-way interaction, p = .04). However, a three-way interaction (p = .006) indicated that the reduction with nicotine was strongest at the highest target frequency (0.6 Hz) only without distractors, whereas in the presence of distractors, it was strongest at 0.4-Hz target frequency. There were no effects of nicotine on subjective state measures.
Together, these findings support a role of both distractor inhibition and general processing load in the effects of nicotine on smooth pursuit.
非选择性烟碱型乙酰胆碱受体（nAChR）激动剂尼古丁被认为可以通过增强对无关刺激的过滤来改善注意力。在这里，我们在平滑追踪眼动（SPEM）的背景下测试了这一假设，先前的研究表明，在某些但不是所有研究中，尼古丁可以改善 SPEM。
为了测试尼古丁是否可以改善注意力，特别是在需要抑制分散注意力的刺激时，我们在有或没有外周分散注意力的情况下诱发 SPEM。此外，使用不同的目标频率来参数化地改变 SPEM 系统的一般处理需求。
健康的成年不吸烟者（N=18 名女性，N=13 名男性）在双盲、安慰剂对照、交叉设计中使用 2 毫克尼古丁口香糖，在不同的目标频率（0.2 Hz、0.4 Hz、0.6 Hz）下完成水平正弦 SPEM 任务，同时存在或不存在外周分散注意力的情况。
尼古丁相对于安慰剂增加了峰值追踪增益（p<0.001），但与分散注意力条件的相互作用（p=0.001）表明，这种效果在存在分散注意力的情况下更为明显。尼古丁减少了追赶性眼球跳动的频率（p=0.01），特别是在更高的目标频率下（双向相互作用，p=0.04）。然而，三向相互作用（p=0.006）表明，在没有分散注意力的情况下，只有在最高目标频率（0.6 Hz）下，尼古丁的减少作用最强，而在存在分散注意力的情况下，在 0.4 Hz 的目标频率下最强。尼古丁对主观状态测量没有影响。
这些发现共同支持了分散注意力抑制和一般处理负载在尼古丁对平滑追踪影响中的作用。
