• Oliver Behler, Thomas P K Breckel, and Christiane M Thiel.
• Biological Psychology, Department of Psychology, European Medical School, Carl-von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Ammerländer Heer Str. 114-118, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany.
• Psychopharmacology (Berl.). 2015 Apr 1; 232 (7): 1269-77.

RationaleSeveral studies provide evidence that nicotine alleviates the detrimental effects of distracting sensory stimuli. It is been suggested that nicotine may either act as a stimulus filter that prevents irrelevant stimuli entering awareness or by enhancing the attentional focus to relevant stimuli via a boost in processing capacity.ObjectivesTo differentiate between these two accounts, we administered nicotine to healthy non-smokers and investigated distractor interference in a visual search task with low and high perceptual load to tax processing capacity.MethodsThirty healthy non-smokers received either 7 mg transdermal nicotine or a matched placebo in a double blind within subject design 1 h prior to performing the visual search task with different fixation distractors.ResultsNicotine reduced interference of incongruent distractors, but only under low-load conditions, where distractor effects were large. No effects of nicotine were observed under high-load conditions. Highly distractible subjects showed the largest effects of nicotine.ConclusionsThe findings suggest that nicotine acts primarily as a stimulus filter that prevents irrelevant stimuli from entering awareness in situations of high distractor interference.

22 keywords...

hide…