Nicotine reduces distraction under low perceptual load
| Autor: | Christiane M. Thiel, Thomas P. K. Breckel, Oliver Behler |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male Nicotine medicine.medical_specialty Adolescent genetic structures media_common.quotation_subject Poison control Sensory system Audiology Stimulus (physiology) Administration Cutaneous behavioral disciplines and activities Young Adult Double-Blind Method Perception Distraction Reaction Time medicine Humans Attention media_common Pharmacology Visual search business.industry humanities Visual Perception Female Psychopharmacology business Photic Stimulation psychological phenomena and processes medicine.drug |
| Zdroj: | Psychopharmacology. 232:1269-1277 |
| ISSN: | 1432-2072 0033-3158 |
| Popis: | Several 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. To 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. Thirty 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. Nicotine 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. The findings suggest that nicotine acts primarily as a stimulus filter that prevents irrelevant stimuli from entering awareness in situations of high distractor interference. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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