A behavioural and functional neuroimaging investigation into the effects of nicotine on sensorimotor gating in healthy subjects and persons with schizophrenia.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To investigate whether nicotine enhances tactile PPI in healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia employing a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design and, if so, what are the neural correlates of nicotine-induced modulation of PPI.

Why It Was Studied

Schizophrenia patients display an excessive rate of smoking compared to the general population.

No previous study has examined the neural mechanisms of the effect of nicotine on PPI in humans.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 2, subjects taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults, men only.

In experiment 2, six healthy subjects and five schizophrenia patients of the original sample (all male smokers) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) under the same drug conditions and the same tactile PPI paradigm as in experiment 1.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the subjects nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some subjects received a placebo instead of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), giving a reference point.

Each person switched between Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Arousal, Attention, Brain, Drug Synergism, Hippocampus, Image Enhancement and Image Processing, Computer-Assisted.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 2, subjects.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2006 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.