The effects of smoking on anti-saccades: A study in regular smokers

Abstract

As a possible mechanism for the accelerating effect of cigarette smoking on saccadic latency time, the authors postulated in a previous study the hypothesis that nicotine could modulate the inhibitory system involved in saccadic initiation. To investigate this inhibitory system, they analyzed the latency time and the percentage of misdirected saccades in an anti-saccade test in the same group of regular smokers. They found no statistically significant effect of cigarette consumption on either anti-saccadic latency time or on the percentage of misdirected saccades.

The authors conclude that, in regular smokers, the long term accelerating effect of cigarette smoking on visually guided saccadic latencies is mediated through the general arousal effects of nicotine to the diverse excitatory pathways involved in saccade generation or to circuits responsible for shifts in visual attention.

Key Words:

• Smoking
• nicotine
• eye-movements
• anti-saccades