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Nicotine enhances auditory processing in healthy and normal-hearing young adult nonsmokers

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Abstract

Rationale

Electrophysiological studies show that systemic nicotine narrows frequency receptive fields and increases gain in neural responses to characteristic frequency stimuli. We postulated that nicotine enhances related auditory processing in humans.

Objectives

The main hypothesis was that nicotine improves auditory performance. A secondary hypothesis was that the degree of nicotine-induced improvement depends on the individual’s baseline performance.

Methods

Young (18–27 years old), normal-hearing nonsmokers received nicotine (Nicorette gum, 6mg) or placebo gum in a single-blind, randomized, crossover design. Subjects performed four experiments involving tone-in-noise detection, temporal gap detection, spectral ripple discrimination, and selective auditory attention before and after treatment. The perceptual differences between posttreatment nicotine and placebo conditions were measured and analyzed as a function of the pre-treatment baseline performance.

Results

Nicotine significantly improved performance in the more difficult tasks of tone-in-noise detection and selective attention (effect size = − 0.3) but had no effect on relatively easier tasks of temporal gap detection and spectral ripple discrimination. The two tasks showing significant nicotine effects further showed no baseline-dependent improvement.

Conclusions

Nicotine improves auditory performance in difficult listening situations. The present results support future investigation of nicotine effects in clinical populations with auditory processing deficits or reduced cholinergic activation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Barbara Bodenhoefer, Sahara George, and Zekiye Onsan for subject recruitment assistance, Dr. Thomas Lu for technical assistance, Dr. Jonathan Venezia for statistical assistance, and the reviewers for helpful suggestions.

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to FGZ (5R01DC015587), to RM (4R01-DC013200) and a pre-doctoral fellowship to CQP (UL1-TR000153).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Hearing Research, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Carol Q. Pham, Michelle R. Kapolowicz, Raju Metherate & Fan-Gang Zeng

  2. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Carol Q. Pham & Fan-Gang Zeng

  3. Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Michelle R. Kapolowicz & Fan-Gang Zeng

  4. Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Raju Metherate

  5. Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Fan-Gang Zeng

Authors
  1. Carol Q. Pham
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  2. Michelle R. Kapolowicz
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  3. Raju Metherate
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  4. Fan-Gang Zeng
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Correspondence to Fan-Gang Zeng.

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Conflict of interest

F.G.Z. owns stock in Axonics, Nurotron, Syntiant, and Velox Biosystems. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Pham, C.Q., Kapolowicz, M.R., Metherate, R. et al. Nicotine enhances auditory processing in healthy and normal-hearing young adult nonsmokers. Psychopharmacology 237, 833–840 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-019-05421-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-019-05421-x

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