Nicotine is an addictive substance that is known to enhance cognitive function during acute administration whereas acute withdrawal results in cognitive impairment (Levin et al., 2006). Cole et al. (Cole et al., 2010) found that cognitive withdrawal improvement, measured using an rapid visual information-processing task (Wesnes and Warburton, 1983), observed after nicotine replacement is associated with increased anti-correlation between default mode and executive control networks. While cognitive improvement could be linked to increased connectivity effects within executive control and fronto-parietal networks, reduced connectivity has also been found within networks involving the posterior cingulate and precuneus (Pariyadath et al., 2014). In the same study, Pariyadath et al. found that both increased and decreased connectivity helps in predicting smoking status using a support-vector-machine classifier. Decreased DMN and enhanced extra-striate activity during a resting state experiment with administered nicotine have been theorized to be linked with an activity shift from internal to external information processing networks (Tanabe et al., 2011). In contrast, a model of nicotine effects during abstinence based on resting state FC results suggests a shift in network dynamics towards endogenous
