Effects of Acute Nicotine on Several Operant Behaviors in Rats

• Published in: Pharmacology, biochemistry and behavior Vol. 65; no. 2; pp. 247 - 254
• Main Authors: Popke, E.Jon, Mayorga, A.J, Fogle, Charles M, Paule, Merle G
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Elsevier Inc 01-02-2000; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Animals; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition - drug effects; Cognitive function; Conditioning, Operant - drug effects; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Learning - drug effects; Male; Medical sciences; Miscellaneous; Nicotine; Nicotine - pharmacology; Nicotinic Agonists - pharmacology; Operant behavior; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Reaction Time - drug effects; Tobacco, tobacco smoking; Toxicology; Rats; Operant behavior; Cognitive function; Nicotine; Intraperitoneal administration; Rat; Toxicity; Rodentia; Instrumental conditioning; Cognition; Time perception; Dose activity relation; Learning; Vertebrata; Visual stimulus; Mammalia; Acquisition process; Acoustic stimulus; Motivation; Animal; Reinforcement; Timing; Stimulus discrimination
• ISSN: 0091-3057; 1873-5177
• DOI: 10.1016/S0091-3057(99)00205-1

The present experiment assessed nicotine's effects on complex cognitive processes using a variety of operant tasks in rats, including incremental repeated acquisition (IRA) to assess learning; conditioned position responding (CPR) to assess auditory, visual, and position discrimination; progressive ratio (PR) to assess motivation; temporal response differentiation (TRD) to assess timing; and differential reinforcement of low response rates (DRL) to assess timing and response inhibition. Acute nicotine administration (0.0, 0.3, 0.42, 0.56, 0.75, and 1.0 mg/kg, IP) increased IRA and CPR response rate without significantly altering accuracy. Nicotine had similar effects on response rate for PR. For TRD, nicotine had a U-shaped dose effect on accuracy, but failed to shift the mode of the TRD response distribution. For DRL, nicotine reduced accuracy and also shifted the mode of the DRL response initiation time distribution to the left. Nicotine produced an inverted U-shaped dose–effect curve for the overall number of “bursting” responses under both of these schedules. The results of this experiment suggest that nicotine can impair performance on some aspects of cognitive-behavioral performance, while simultaneously improving performance on others.