Separate and combined effects of low dose ketamine and nicotine on behavioural and neural correlates of sustained attention.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

As glutamatergic abnormalities have been implicated in these attentional deficiencies, this study attempted to shed light on the separate and interactive roles of the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) and nAChR systems in the modulation of attention by investigating, in healthy volunteers, the separate and combined effects of nicotine and the NMDAR antagonist ketamine on neural and behavioural responses in a sustained attention task.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled study, performance and the P300 event-related brain potential (ERP) in a visual information processing (RVIP) task were examined in 20 smokers and 20 non-smokers (both male and female).

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

As a double-blind Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) could be set against what happens without it.

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Analgesics, Analysis of Variance, Attention, Drug Combinations, Electroencephalography, Electrooculography and Event-Related Potentials, P300.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2011 (Biological psychology), a journal based in Netherlands.

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