Study Explores Effect of Nicotine on Brain

NEW YORK — Nicotine is known to perk up the ability to learn and remember, and now scientists may have figured out part of the reason.

The study bears on working memory, the short-term ability that lets people remember a looked-up phone number long enough to dial it, for example. Scientists think the ability of certain brain cells to communicate through bursts of a substance called acetylcholine is important for storing these short-term memories.

Scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston tested the effects of nicotine on brain cells in the hippocampus, a key area for learning and memory. In slices of rat brain, they found evidence that nicotine makes brain cells kick out extra acetylcholine. That might partly explain how it helps working memory, they said in the Oct. 24 issue of the journal Nature.