ArticlePsychopharmacology2020
Dissociation of nicotinic α7 and α4/β2 sub-receptor agonists for enhancing learning and attentional filtering in nonhuman primates.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Historical and Current Ethnographic Use of Tobacco in Brazil: Implications for the Medicinal Use of Nicotine in Parkinson's Disease.Journal of environmental science and public health · 2026Article
- Assessing attentiveness and cognitive engagement across tasks using video-based action understanding in non-human primates.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2025Article
- Tissue-specific roles of de novo DNA methyltransferases.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2025Review
- MProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Dose-Dependent Dissociation of Pro-cognitive Effects of Donepezil on Attention and Cognitive Flexibility in Rhesus Monkeys.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- Nicotine promotes the utility of short-term memory during visual search in macaque monkeys.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Novel Pharmacotherapies in Parkinson's Disease.Neurotoxicity research · 2021Review
- A Kiosk Station for the Assessment of Multiple Cognitive Domains and Cognitive Enrichment of Monkeys.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Nicotine and the nicotinic cholinergic system in COVID-19.The FEBS journal · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleNicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) modulate attention, memory, and higher executive functioning, but it is unclear how nACh sub-receptors mediate different mechanisms supporting these functions.
objectivesWe investigated whether selective agonists for the alpha-7 nAChR versus the alpha-4/beta-2 nAChR have unique functional contributions for value learning and attentional filtering of distractors in the nonhuman primate.
methodsTwo adult rhesus macaque monkeys performed reversal learning following systemic administration of either the alpha-7 nAChR agonist PHA-543613 or the alpha-4/beta-2 nAChR agonist ABT-089 or a vehicle control. Behavioral analysis quantified performance accuracy, speed of processing, reversal learning speed, the control of distractor interference, perseveration tendencies, and motivation.
resultsWe found that the alpha-7 nAChR agonist PHA-543613 enhanced the learning speed of feature values but did not modulate how salient distracting information was filtered from ongoing choice processes. In contrast, the selective alpha-4/beta-2 nAChR agonist ABT-089 did not affect learning speed but reduced distractibility. This dissociation was dose-dependent and evident in the absence of systematic changes in overall performance, reward intake, motivation to perform the task, perseveration tendencies, or reaction times.
conclusionsThese results suggest nicotinic sub-receptor specific mechanisms consistent with (1) alpha-4/beta-2 nAChR specific amplification of cholinergic transients in prefrontal cortex linked to enhanced cue detection in light of interferences, and (2) alpha-7 nAChR specific activation prolonging cholinergic transients, which could facilitate subjects to follow-through with newly established attentional strategies when outcome contingencies change. These insights will be critical for developing function-specific drugs alleviating attention and learning deficits in neuro-psychiatric diseases.
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