Dopamine receptor (DRD2) genotype‐dependent effects of nicotine on attention and distraction during rapid visual information processing

Abstract

The effects of nicotine, distractor type, and dopamine type-2 receptor (DRD2) genotype on rapid visual information processing (RVIP) task performance were assessed in habitual smokers. Four RVIP tasks differed in terms of distractor location (central vs. peripheral) and distractor type (numeric vs. emotional). Each participant performed each of the tasks on two different days, once while wearing an active nicotine patch and once while wearing a placebo patch. Overall, the nicotine patch produced more accurate detection of and faster reaction times to target sequences; however, these effects varied with distractor type and genotype. Nicotine speeded reaction time more with left-visual-field (LVF) than right-visual-field (RVF) emotional distractors but speeded reaction time more with RVF than LVF numeric distractors, especially when the distractor digit matched the target sequence in terms of numeric oddness or evenness. Nicotine tended to facilitate performance more in individuals with at least one A1 allele than in homozygous A2A2 individuals, especially with numeric distractors presented to the left hemisphere. Nicotine tended to reduce distraction by negative stimuli more than other types of stimuli. Few gender differences were observed. The overall pattern of results was consistent with the view that nicotine modulates selective attention or subsequent information processing in a manner that depends partly on the emotional versus numeric nature of task distractors, DRD2 genotype, and the brain hemisphere that initially processes the distractors (visual field of distractor).

The early time course of smoking withdrawal effects

“…Participants are instructed to press a response button whenever they notice three consecutive odd or even digits. Abstinence from smoking has been consistently shown to impair RVIP performance in smokers (e.g., Baldinger et al 1995;Edwards et al 1985;Foulds et al 1996;Gilbert et al 2005;Hasenfratz and Bättig 1993;Lawrence et al 2002;Mancuso et al 1999a;Parrott and Craig 1992;Parrott and Winder 1989;Petrie and Deary 1989;Revell 1988;Warburton and Arnall 1994;Warburton and Mancuso 1998;Warburton 1983, 1984;Zack et al 2001) with rare exception (e.g., Cook et al 2003). Thus, the RVIP appears to be among the best measures of withdrawalrelated attentional capacity.…”

Alpha Oscillations in Response to Affective and Cigarette-Related Stimuli in Smokers

“…Next, we obtained several psychophysiological measures that included dense-sensor array EEG recording during the presentation of pictures from four valence categories: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, and cigarette related. Three equivalent picture sets containing 96 pictures (24 per category) were created by selecting images from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2005) and other smoking-related picture sets used in previous studies Gilbert et al, 2005). Subjects were randomly assigned to view one of these three sets during the baseline session.…”

The effects of nicotine dose expectancy and motivationally relevant distracters on vigilance.

“…Performance on the RVIP has been reliably found to be impaired in smokers during nicotine abstinence compared to nonabstinence (Baldinger, Hasenfratz, & Bättig, 1995; Foulds et al, 1996; Hendricks, Ditre, Drobes, & Brandon, 2006; Leventhal, Waters, Moolchan, Heishman, & Pickworth, 2010; Mancuso, Andres, Ansseau, & Tirelli, 1999; Zack, Belsito, Scher, Eissenberg, & Corrigall, 2001). The RVIP-CED is a modified version of the traditional RVIP task developed by Gilbert and colleagues (Gilbert et al, 2005; Gilbert et al, 2007) to evaluate the impact of smoking-related and affective distracter slides on sustained attention. In the RVIP-CED, the task is to identify 3 consecutive even or odd digits while ignoring smoking-related and affective distracter slides periodically presented during the stream of digits.…”