It appears as if Joe E. Dees <joedees@bellsouth.net> wrote:
|Could the purported cognitive benefits of nicotine (improved
|memory and logical function) be due to the narcotic dampening
|effect nicotine has upon our perceptions, thus reducing
|phenomenal distractions from abstract processing?
During a discussion on the local Swedish transhumanist mailing list, Anders
Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> asserted that nicotine had various effects on the
human biocomputer, including attention increase. To verify the validity of
this assertion, I bought some of the strongest nicotine plasters on the
Swedish market, and used them as directed by the manufacturer.
I experienced improved memory recall, attention, and memory indexing, but
also dizziness and nausea (I do not normally use tobacco).
As for "narcotic dampening", it definitely does not match my experience;
more like the opposite, in fact.
Naturally, this does not form a scientific survey of the effects of nicotine,
but it strengthens the previous findings to some degree.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:02 MDT