Abstract
Successful decision making in our daily lives requires weighing an option’s costs against its associated benefits. The neuromodulator acetylcholine underlies both the etiology and treatment of a number of illnesses in which decision making is perturbed, including Alzheimer’s disease, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. Nicotine acts on the cholinergic system and has been touted as a cognitive enhancer by both smokers and some researchers for its attention-boosting effects; however, it is unclear whether treatments that have a beneficial effect on attention would also have a beneficial effect on decision making. Here we utilize the rodent Cognitive Effort Task (rCET), wherein animals can choose to allocate greater visuospatial attention for a greater reward, to examine cholinergic contributions to both attentional performance and choice based on attentional demand. Following the establishment of baseline behavior, four drug challenges were administered: nicotine, mecamylamine, scopolamine, and oxotremorine (saline plus three doses for each). As per previous rCET studies, animals were divided by their baseline preferences, with “worker” rats choosing high-effort/high-reward options more than their “slacker” counterparts. Nicotine caused slackers to choose even fewer high-effort trials than at baseline, but had no effect on workers’ choice. Despite slackers’ decreased willingness to expend effort, nicotine improved their attentional performance on the task. Nicotine also increased measures of motor impulsivity in all animals. In contrast, scopolamine decreased animals’ choice of high-effort trials, especially for workers, while oxotremorine decreased motor impulsivity for all animals. In sum, the cholinergic system appears to contribute to decision making, and in part these contributions can be understood as a function of individual differences. While nicotine has been considered as a cognitive enhancer, these data suggest that its modest benefits to attention may be coupled with impulsiveness and decreased willingness to work hard, especially in individuals who are particularly sensitive to effort costs (i.e. slackers).
Highlights
In our daily lives, we are often confronted with decisions that require weighing each option’s costs against its associated benefits
The most commonly reported cholinergic-driven improvements are within the attentional domain, a cognitive process long associated with central acetylcholine [13]
It is unclear whether treatments that have a beneficial effect on attention per se would have a beneficial effect on choices related to those demand costs
Summary
We are often confronted with decisions that require weighing each option’s costs against its associated benefits. Laboratory models of decision making have been developed to characterize these deficits in humans and identify putative neurobiological mechanisms [3,4], while animal models have allowed researchers to test the causative relationships between neural circuitry, neurochemistry, and choice [5]. These studies have yielded considerable converging data on contributions of cortico-limbic-striatal brain regions, as well as neuromodulatory influences, on decision making [6,7]. Cigarette smokers often claim that nicotine enhances their mental focus and performance, but such effects may be limited to specific cognitive domains or relevant only to a subsection of individuals [19]
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