Table 3. Effect of nicotine on performance of the BMS, RT and PR tasks.
Mean scores for the Bimanual Motor Skill (N = 6), Reaction Time (N = 5) and Progressive Ratio (N = 6) tasks are listed; values in parenthesis indicate SEM. No significant group effects of nicotine were observed for these tasks at any dose. Animals did not generally exhibit similar curves at different points of the dose-response function, as with the memory tasks, therefore the best-dose analyses did not identify any consistent effects of nicotine.
| Task | Measure | Treatment Condition | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | Vehicle | Nicotine (μg/kg) | |||||||
| 3.2 | 10 | 17.8 | 24 | 32 | 56 | ||||
| BMS | Percent of baseline latency | 20.4 (2.4) | 20.4 (2.6) | 20.5 (2.6) | 19.8 (2.5) | 19.3 (2.4) | 18.6 (2.3) | 18.7 (1.1) | 20.1 (1.9) |
| RT | Release latency (ms) | 302.2 (34.5) | 302.5 (29.9) | 317.2 (34.3) | 299.9 (33.7) | 305.6 (38.2) | 302.3 (35.9) | 255.4 (10.1) | 303.2 (39.1) |
| Movement time (ms) | 475.8 (44.3) | 470.9 (38.7) | 497.2 (48.3) | 481.9 (47.7) | 475.6 (45.5) | 475.1 (40.5) | 419.7 (137.5) | 442.1 (32.6) | |
| PR | Reinforcers acquired | 20.6 (1.8) | 20.3 (1.6) | 20.5 (1.4) | 21.5 (2.2) | 21.1 (2.4) | 20.6 (3.0) | 21.4 (1.2) | 19.4 (0.9) |
| Time to last response (min) | 6.8 (0.8) | 7.0 (0.7) | 6.6 (1.2) | 7.5 (0.6) | 7.1 (1.1) | 6.0 (1.1) | 6.1 (1.0) | 7.1 (0.9) | |
| Response rate (touches/min) | 48.2 (8.2) | 44.2 (6.8) | 40.8 (7.5) | 48.2 (12.5) | 49.5 (14.0) | 50.1 (17.6) | 47.2 (7.1) | 34.0 (5.6) | |