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The Effects of Tobacco Smoke and Nicotine on Cognition and the Brain

Overview of attention for article published in Neuropsychology Review, August 2007
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Among the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#16 of 489)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
7 news outlets
policy
5 policy sources
twitter
8 X users
wikipedia
2 Wikipedia pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
422 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
485 Mendeley
Title
The Effects of Tobacco Smoke and Nicotine on Cognition and the Brain
Published in
Neuropsychology Review, August 2007
DOI 10.1007/s11065-007-9035-9
Pubmed ID
Authors

Gary E. Swan, Christina N. Lessov-Schlaggar

Abstract

Tobacco smoke consists of thousands of compounds including nicotine. Many constituents have known toxicity to the brain, cardiovascular, and pulmonary systems. Nicotine, on the other hand, by virtue of its short-term actions on the cholinergic system, has positive effects on certain cognitive domains including working memory and executive function and may be, under certain conditions, neuroprotective. In this paper, we review recent literature, laboratory and epidemiologic, that describes the components of mainstream and sidestream tobacco smoke, including heavy metals and their toxicity, the effect of medicinal nicotine on the brain, and studies of the relationship between smoking and (1) preclinical brain changes including silent brain infarcts; white matter hyperintensities, and atrophy; (2) single measures of cognition; (3) cognitive decline over repeated measures; and (4) dementia. In most studies, exposure to smoke is associated with increased risk for negative preclinical and cognitive outcomes in younger people as well as in older adults. Potential mechanisms for smoke's harmful effects include oxidative stress, inflammation, and atherosclerotic processes. Recent evidence implicates medicinal nicotine as potentially harmful to both neurodevelopment in children and to catalyzing processes underlying neuropathology in Alzheimer's Disease. The reviewed evidence suggests caution with the use of medicinal nicotine in pregnant mothers and older adults at risk for certain neurological disease. Directions for future research in this area include the assessment of comorbidities (alcohol consumption, depression) that could confound the association between smoking and neurocognitive outcomes, the use of more specific measures of smoking behavior and cognition, the use of biomarkers to index exposure to smoke, and the assessment of cognition-related genotypes to better understand the role of interactions between smoking/nicotine and variation in genotype in determining susceptibility to the neurotoxic effects of smoking and the putative beneficial effects of medicinal nicotine.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 8 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 485 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 3 <1%
Portugal 1 <1%
Germany 1 <1%
Indonesia 1 <1%
Chile 1 <1%
France 1 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Australia 1 <1%
Italy 1 <1%
Other 2 <1%
Unknown 472 97%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 87 18%
Student > Bachelor 71 15%
Student > Master 48 10%
Researcher 47 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 35 7%
Other 79 16%
Unknown 118 24%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 95 20%
Medicine and Dentistry 93 19%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 31 6%
Neuroscience 30 6%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 19 4%
Other 72 15%
Unknown 145 30%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 78. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 September 2023.
All research outputs
#528,501
of 24,920,664 outputs
Outputs from Neuropsychology Review
#16
of 489 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#746
of 73,724 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Neuropsychology Review
#1
of 7 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,920,664 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 489 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 73,724 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them