How Nicotine Plays a role in LTM and Sleep

Nicotine is normally thought of in the negative context with detrimental effects due to nicotine dependence. However, recent studies have shown that acute nicotine use has some benefits to chronic health issues such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and thyroid disease. It has even shown to be beneficial in memory and recall in sleep deprived rats. Daniel Cavanaugh’s research introduced that sleep in Drosophila becomes circadian dependent in the L3 stage of their life. They speculated that sleep patterns in their earlier stages of life were under metabolic control. Their research also showed how sleep patterns are beneficial to the organism in terms of memory and cognition and could potentially elevate cognition.

Daniel Cavanaugh’s research used Drosophila to demonstrate the transition of sleep patterns from metabolic to circadian control. This research shows that flies in younger stages below L3 do not have sleep patterns under circadian control because their bodies have high metabolic demands. This prevents their bodies from developing circadian sleep patterns. Once their body is able to sustain nutrients and better control their metabolism, they are able to develop circadian patterns of sleep. These patterns are crucial for long term memory (LTM) formation. They were also able to determine that sleep deprivation interrupts memory formation as well. (Cavanaugh et al.)

Alhowail in his paper “Molecular insights into the benefits of nicotine on memory and cognition” gathers research on the benefits of nicotine studied by other researchers. His conclusions show nicotine has some health benefits in Parkinson’s disease by improving dyskinesia and other symptoms. In Alzheimer’s disease, nicotine potentially slows down cognitive decline. Nicotine when used acutely in sleep deprived rats, improved memory impairment. Specifically, sleep deprived rats performed memory tasks better under the influence of nicotine. Sleep deprivation causes memory impairment as seen in Cavanagh’s study as well as Alkadhi et al. The downregulation of CaMKII led to memory impairment. However, in rats, the acute use of nicotine while sleep deprived led to increased phosphorylation of CaMKII leading to less memory impairment. 

Could this mean that nicotine plays a role in LTM and short-term memory formation? The short-term use of nicotine and its effects on memory have to be studied further to see if these results can be replicated, however, this could be groundbreaking. Potentially using nicotine as a medication in the future could very well be a reality.

 

References:
    Alhowail, Ahmad. “Molecular insights into the benefits of nicotine on memory and Cognition (review).” Molecular Medicine Reports, vol. 23, no. 6, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2021.12037.
    Alkadhi, Karim, et al. “Neurobiological consequences of sleep deprivation.” Current Neuropharmacology, vol. 11, no. 3, 2013, pp. 231–249, https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159x11311030001.
    Dugas, EN, et al. “Nicotine dependence and sleep quality in young adults.” Addictive Behaviors, vol. 65, 2017, pp. 154–160, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2016.10.020.
    Poe, Amy R., et al. “Developmental emergence of sleep rhythms enables long-term memory in drosophila.” Science Advances, vol. 9, no. 36, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2301.