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Nicotine Swells the Working Memory Capacity

Nicotine improves the capacity of the 'working memory', the store where information is temporarily stocked in order to re-use it during cognitive processing, through the activation of regions of the frontal and prefrontal cortices of the right hemisphere in the human brain. It also appears to impair brain processing underpinning motor response choice and execution. These are the outcomes of a study carried out by the CNR-IBFM and the Bicocca University of Milan suggesting that the administration of this alkaloid might be used to contrast working memory impairment and motor dyskinesia in the Parkinson disorder under non pathological forms as cigarettes smoking.