Chronic and acute tolerance to subjective effects of nicotine

Transdermal Nicotine Maintenance Attenuates the Subjective and Reinforcing Effects of Intravenous Nicotine, but not Cocaine or Caffeine, in Cigarette-Smoking Stimulant Abusers

“…More specifically, during the nicotine maintenance phase, ratings of Drug Effect, Rush, Liking, High, Good Effects, Alert, and Stimulated were reduced to an average of 37% (range 27-45%) of levels during the placebo maintenance phase, with ratings on six of these seven scales no longer being significantly different from placebo. These results extend previous research showing that tolerance develops to the subjective effects of chronically administered nicotine (West and Russell, 1987;Perkins et al, 1993Perkins et al, , 1994Heishman and Henningfield, 2000) by demonstrating virtually complete tolerance to the effects of a high intravenous dose of nicotine under rigorous double-blind conditions.…”

“…It should be noted, however, that the only significant elevations on these measures occurred during the placebo maintenance phase, which suggests a trend toward tolerance to nicotine's cardiovascular effects. The failure to demonstrate robust tolerance to the cardiovascular effects of nicotine is consistent with previous studies (Perkins et al, 1994;Soria et al, 1996). Also of note is the observation that, following intravenous placebo, heart rate was modestly but significantly increased in the nicotine maintenance condition.…”

Smoking History and Nicotine Effects on Cognitive Performance

“…Nevertheless, the present study cannot distinguish deficits in working memory that preceded nicotine dependence from those that may be attributable to chronic nicotine exposure. Impaired memory performance, as seen here, is surprising in view of the reported improvement in memory performance in animals chronically exposed to nicotine (Attaway et al 1999;Levin et al 1997) and in humans (Perkins et al 1994;Pineda et al 1998). However, this finding is consistent with reports of impaired performance on complex information-processing tasks in chronic smokers, independent of nicotine withdrawal or smoking abstinence (Spilich et al 1992).…”

“…The similarity of the decrease in reaction time attributable to nicotine administration by all three groups suggests that the effects of nicotine did not simply reflect a reversal of nicotine withdrawal. It also indicates that this effect did not manifest tolerance, which would predict a smaller effect in smokers than in nonsmokers (Perkins et al 1994). The effects of acute nicotine administration were task specific, occurring only with the Two-Letter Search Task and not with the Logical Reasoning Task, the Two-Back, or Three-Back Task.…”

“…The results have been discrepant, including improved performance in motor responses, sustained attention, and recognition memory, but no effect or impairment in selective attention, conditioned learning, and recall mem-ory. Similarly, few studies have examined the cognitive effects of a history of smoking; and again, the results have been inconsistent (Perkins et al 1990;Perkins et al 1994;Foulds et al 1996).…”