Acute effect of nicotine on non-smokers: III. LLRs and EEGs

This paper is the last in a series of three investigating the role of choli nergic mechanisms in the auditory system by assessing the acute effects of nicotine, an acetylcholinomimetic drug, on aggregate responses within the a uditory pathway. In a single-blind procedure, auditory responses were obtai ned from 20 normal-hearing, non-smokers (10 male) under two conditions (nic otine, placebo). The effects of nicotine on long-latency responses of the a uditory system and on electroencephalograms are described in this paper. Re sults indicated that transdermal administration of nicotine to non-smokers significantly affects the afferent and efferent transmission of acoustic in formation, as well as enhancing cortical activation. Long-latency response amplitudes and electroencephalogram activity (dominant power and frequencie s) were altered by acute doses of transdermal nicotine. (C) 2001 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.