Nicotine’s performance-enhancing properties manifest in multiple cognitive domains, particularly when considering abstinent smokers (Heishman et al., 1994, 2010; Newhouse et al., 2004). Previous neuroimaging studies exploring such nicotinic or cholinergic effects have often done so in the context of cognitive task paradigms, providing information regarding pharmacological actions generally within specific brain regions (for review, see Bentley et al., 2011). rsFC studies may provide additional, complementary insight by considering circuit interactions between regions (Bressler and Menon, 2010), thus allowing for a systems-level mechanistic account of nicotine’s performance-enhancing properties, which has remained elusive. Below, we synthesize a heuristic framework that may serve to guide future research by integrating recent findings from intrinsic network connectivity neuroimaging studies with those from investigations interrogating nicotine’s neuropharmacological actions. Given that a hallmark feature of the tobacco abstinence syndrome is difficulty concentrating (Parrott et al., 1996, Hughes 2007), a systems-level theoretical account of nicotine’s effects on cognition could inform the development of improved smoking cessation pharmacotherapies (Lerman et al., 2007) and, additionally, may hold therapeutic utility for other disease states involving attentional dysfunction (Levin 2006).
