Facilitation of learning and state dependency with nicotine.

Two studies of nicotine and memory encoding were carried out using a state-dependent design. The first experiment used cigarettes and involved memory for stimuli that could not be encoded phonemically or semantically. The results of this recognition study show that nicotine was facilitating the input of non-phonemicably encodable and non-semanticably encodable information to storage and that nicotine produced state-dependent learning. The second study used nicotine tablets and involved memory for concrete words. The results of the free recall study show that nicotine produced state-dependent learning, that nicotine was facilitating the input of information to storage, but there was no evidence that associative processes had been changed by nicotine. These findings give no support for the suggestion that a cholinergic system in the brain is controlling the encoding of intrinsic cues relating to phonemic and semantic properties of things but not those involving mnemonic encoding by mental imagery, but rather that the cholinergic system is non-specifically involved in encoding.