کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
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5815325 | 1115517 | 2012 | 6 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
Smoking prevalence is highly elevated in schizophrenia compared to the general population and to other psychiatric populations. Evidence suggests that smoking may lead to improvements of schizophrenia-associated attention deficits; however, large-scale studies on this important issue are scarce. We examined whether sustained, selective, and executive attention processes are differentially modulated by long-term nicotine consumption in 104 schizophrenia patients and 104 carefully matched healthy controls. A significant interaction of 'smoking status'Â ÃÂ 'diagnostic group' was obtained for the domain of selective attention. Smoking was significantly associated with a detrimental conflict effect in controls, while the opposite effect was revealed for schizophrenia patients. Likewise, a positive correlation between a cumulative measure of nicotine consumption and conflict effect in controls and a negative correlation in patients were found. These results provide evidence for specific directional effects of smoking on conflict processing that critically dissociate with diagnosis. The data supports the self-medication hypothesis of smoking in schizophrenia and suggests selective attention as a specific cognitive domain targeted by nicotine consumption. A potential mechanistic model explaining these findings is discussed.
⺠Smoking is associated with detrimental behavioral conflict effect in controls. ⺠In schizophrenia patients, smoking is associated with a beneficial behavioral conflict effect. ⺠A single coherent mechanism posits a nicotine-dopamine interaction in the prefrontal cortex. ⺠Smoking leads to rightward shift of dopamine 1 receptor function along an inverted U shaped function.
Journal: Neuropharmacology - Volume 62, Issue 4, March 2012, Pages 1897-1902