Effects of post-trial administration of nicotine on human memory: evaluating the conditions for improving memory

In the studies reported here, we investigated the effects of nicotine on memory for unrelated word lists. Nicotine was delivered through cigarette smoking, and memory performance was assessed using both intentional and incidental recall tasks, and employing an additional, indirect measure of memory. We report the results of four experiments in which we manipulated 1) the intake of nicotine using nicotine-containing and nicotine-free cigarettes, 2) the associative aspects of the word-sets, by unrelated words and category words and by instructing subjects to use an associative mnemonic strategy, 3) the opportunity for rehearsal between the presentation and recall, and 4) the time of nicotine administration, post- or pre-trial. We found a positive effect of post-trial nicotine on memory in the incidental recall task, as indicated by enhanced repetition priming, but no effect of nicotine on either immediate recall or pronunciation times (experiments 1 and 2). In experiment 3 we examined the effects of post-trial nicotine using associative and unrelated word-lists, when volunteers were instructed to use an associative mnemonic strategy. We found no main effect of nicotine, but when volunteers were distracted from rehearsal, related words were recalled better than unrelated words. Experiment 4 was a positive control for the timing of nicotine administration within our experimental design, and this showed that pre-trial nicotine not only improved free recall but differentially enhanced the recall of category words over unrelated words.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)