Need to Convince Someone of the Benefits of Nicotine? This Should Do It…

Just in case you ever find yourself wanting to convince someone of the benefits of nicotine, the link below will lead you to a statistical analysis which is a study of many studies of nicotine. Such studies are referred to as a “meta-analysis” and when done properly, as this one seems to be, they are given considerable attention and credibility in scientific journals. In addition, the article itself was published in a prestigious journal called, Psychopharmacology. It studied 41 separate, previously published studies of the performance enhancing effects of nicotine. The findings were: "We found significant positive effects of nicotine or smoking on six domains: fine motor, alerting attention-accuracy and response time (RT), orienting attention-RT, short-term episodic memory- accuracy, and working memory-RT Such findings for a single study are important and significant. But for these to be the findings of a meta-analysis is significant indeed. Amazingly, but not surprising to us, the researchers concluded that: “Empirical information about nicotine’s ability to enhance elements of cognition in healthy individuals, as revealed by this meta-analysis, might inform novel therapeutic uses of nicotine and nicotinic agents in cognitively impaired populations.” In other words, they are recommending nicotine as a treatment for some people who have been cognitively impaired. Here’s the link: http://dengulenegl.dk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/meta-analysis-acute-effects-of-nicotine-and-smoking-on-human-performance.pdf