Effects of nicotine and smoking on event-related potentials: a review.

Event-related potentials can serve as an adjunct to reaction time in elucidating the effects of nicotine on rapid human information processing. We review the literature related to nicotine and event-related potentials. Although evidence indicates that, in the visual modality, nicotine enhances early perceptual processing and in certain instances speeding stimulus evaluation, the bulk of nicotine's effects seem to be on enhancing response preparation and response execution.