Adolescent Nicotine Exposure and Adult Cognitive Processes in Rats

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent research has shown that adolescent drug exposure can cause long-lasting changes in brain physiology, brain reward systems, susceptibility to later addiction, and simple behavior. The research proposed in this application involves a serial pattern learning paradigm for studying rat complex cognitive processes that is tightly modeled after nonverbal paradigms for studying high-level cognitive functions in humans. This serial pattern learning method has demonstrated that adolescent nicotine exposure causes cognitive dysfunction in adult rats. We propose to continue this line of research to investigate the magnitude and nature of the cognitive deficits produced by adolescent exposure to nicotine using this model system for studying the function and dysfunction of cognitive and neural systems involved in complex cognitive processes in rats. The proposed studies will use the serial pattern learning paradigm to achieve several specific aims to achieve the general goal of the research: The first specific aim is to conduct a dose-response study with established parameters from the preliminary study to investigate the dose-response effects of adolescent nicotine exposure on adult cognitive processes. The second specific aim is to characterize the nature of the effects on adult cognitive processes produced by adolescent nicotine exposure and to identify the cognitive processes involved. The third specific aim is to determine whether adolescent nicotine exposure produces global or more specific cognitive deficits. The fourth specific aim is to determine whether adolescent nicotine exposure effects on adult cognitive processes are transient or long-lasting. The fifth specific aim is to determine whether nicotine exposure effects on cognition observed with the adolescent exposure model reflect a sensitive period in development or an impairment that can also be induced by nicotine exposure in adulthood. The sixth specific aim is to examine evidence for potential sex differences in effects of adolescent nicotine exposure on cognitive processes in male and female rats. The proposed research will characterize the nature of adolescent nicotine effects on adult rat cognitive processes, the magnitude and persistence of these effects, whether or not they reflect a sensitive period in development, and whether there are associated sex differences in adult cognitive effects of adolescent nicotine exposure. The results will lay the groundwork for future studies to explore the neural basis of adolescent nicotine exposure effects on adult cognitive capacity. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research will characterize the nature of adolescent nicotine effects on adult rat cognitive processes, the magnitude and persistence of these effects, whether or not they reflect a sensitive period in development, and whether there are associated sex differences in adult cognitive effects of adolescent nicotine exposure. The results will lay the groundwork for future studies to explore the neural basis of adolescent nicotine exposure effects on adult cognitive capacity. The results will also provide new information regarding the important public health question of the extent to which adolescent nicotine exposure is a threat to adult cognitive capacity.