ABSTRACT
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The aim of this chapter is to provide practical information regarding methodological issues in the study of nicotinic agents on cognition in both clinical and normal volunteer populations. The scope is rather broad, briefly reviewing clinical disorders for which nicotinic stimulation may have therapeutic uses, and then addressing several methodological issues involving subject selection, drug administration, and measures to use. The review of issues related to subject selection will address studying patient populations vs. normal volunteers, as well as issues involving characteristics of individual subjects including age, gender, and smoking status. Drug administration issues will be discussed including practical advantages and disadvantages to different dosing methods (iv, subcutaneous, transdermal, inhaled, nasal, and oral). Finally, issues involved in selecting measures for differing research purposes
will be examined including tests of learning, memory, attention, behavioral ratings, electrophysiological measures, and neuroimaging techniques.
