Nicotine effects on self-organized and task-related neural activation patterns

• Applicant: Dr. Carsten Gießing
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 136973282

From our daily experience we know that in the same situation we often behave quite differently. Our behaviour is influenced by long-lasting factors like, for example, previous experiences, the state of vigilance, or arousal. Previous research revealed that the same is true for the behavioural effects of drugs like nicotine. In dependence of our arousal state nicotine leads to different behavioural effects. In the last years brain research changed its perspective and recognized that experimental or situational manipulations lead only to small modulations of brain activity and the ongoing stream of neural processing. Within the proposed research project I plan to investigate the relationship between these ongoing, long-lasting brain modes, experimental manipulations, and the effects of nicotine. Therefore, 23 smokers were measured in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner performing a continuous attention task. During the research project in Cambridge I intend to refine existing statistical frequency or wavelet analyses that can be applied to a wide variety of baseline dependent drug effects. Thereby, I propose to combine the existing expertise of investigating pharmacological effects on brain activity with the outstanding knowledge in wavelet analyses in the research group of Prof. Dr. Bullmore in Cambridge, GB.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Professor Dr. Ed Bullmore