Limitless?

There may be a drug that can reverse the withdrawal induced deficits of smoking. In humans, quitting smoking shows noticeable cognitive deficits concerning impaired performance on tests of selective attention, sustained attention, and working memory. The drug Donepezil has “been shown to improve working memory in smokers and ameliorate learning deficits in a number of models of disrupted cognition” (Poole, Connor, and Gould, 2014, 589). The authors conducted an experiment where they found that mice who went through withdrawal from twelve days of chronic nicotine use who were not treated with donepezil, but instead with a saline injection, showed significant deficits in contextual learning. “The present finding that donepezil reverses deficits in contextual learning may suggest that donepezil acts to ameliorate dysfunctional cholinergic signaling during withdrawal” (Poole, Connor, and Gould, 2014, 590). With this study there may be positive effects of using donepezil to treat nicotine addiction. However, a limitation to this drug is that it has yet to be used in clinical trials concerning nicotine withdrawal-induced cognitive deficits.

 ABSTRACT

Poole, Rachel L.; Connor, David A.; Gould, Thomas J. Donepezil reverses nicotine withdrawal-induced deficits in contextual fear conditioning in c57bl/6j mice. Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol 128(5), Oct 2014, 588-593.