Acute effects of nicotine administration during prospective memory, an event related fMRI study

We previously demonstrated that stimulating neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors modulates prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember and implement a prior intention. Here we used fMRI to explore the neuronal correlates of acute nicotinic (1 mg) modulation during PM, employing a double blind, valence-matched placebo-controlled design, and a solely event-related analysis. Eight healthy adults completed on two occasions (1 week washout) a simple attentional task containing infrequent PM trials. PM activated bilateral parietal, prefrontal (BA10) and anterior cingulate, and deactivated genual cingulate and medial prefrontal regions. Further, acute nicotine administration decreased activity within a largely overlapping right parietal region. This pilot data validates a purely event-related approach to exploring PM, and suggests procholinergic modulation of PM by parietal rather than BA10/frontal regions.