Recent autoradiography studies of rodents have examined the effects of nicotine/smoking in other neurotransmitter systems that may be activated by nAChR stimulation. For example, in response to nicotine, glutamate release has been demonstrated in the prelimbic prefrontal cortex (Gioanni et al. 1999), and glutamate and aspartate release have been demonstrated in the VTA (Schilstrom et al. 2000). The finding of nAChR-induced glutamate release in the prefrontal cortex has also been demonstrated by measuring spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (Lambe et al. 2003). Importantly, one of these studies (Gioanni et al. 1999) also demonstrated that nicotine administration facilitates thalamo-cortical neurotransmission through stimulation of nAChRs on glutamatergic neurons.
