Cited by 81Smoking Behavior and CessationNicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors StudyNeurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

A psychobiological framework of the substrates that mediate nicotine use during adolescence

Open access
O'Dell, Laura E.·2009·Neuropharmacology

Abstract

Adolescents are especially likely to initiate tobacco use and are more vulnerable to long-term nicotine dependence. A unifying hypothesis is proposed based largely on animals studies that adolescents, as compared to adults, experience enhanced short-term positive and reduced aversive effects of nicotine, as well as less negative effects during nicotine withdrawal. Thus, during adolescence the strong positive effects of nicotine are inadequately balanced by negative effects that contribute to nicotine dependence in adults. This review provides a neural framework to explain developmental differences within the mesolimbic pathway based on the established role of dopamine in addiction. This pathway originates in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and terminates in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) where dopamine is increased by nicotine but decreased during withdrawal. During adolescence, excitatory glutamatergic systems that facilitate dopamine are overdeveloped, whereas inhibitory GABAergic systems are underdeveloped. Thus, it is hypothesized that adolescents display enhanced nicotine reward and reduced withdrawal via enhanced excitation and reduced inhibition of VTA cell bodies that release dopamine in the NAcc. Although this framework focuses on adolescents and adults, it may also apply to the understanding of enhanced vulnerability to nicotine in adults that were previously exposed to nicotine during adolescence. The hypothesis presented in this review suggests that the clinical diagnostic criteria developed for nicotine dependence in adults, based primarily on withdrawal, may be inappropriate during adolescence when nicotine withdrawal does not appear to play a major role in nicotine use. Furthermore, treatment strategies involving nicotine replacement may be harmful for adolescents because it may cause enhanced vulnerability to nicotine dependence later in adulthood.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2008.07.039

Cites

168 of 168 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
O'Dell, L. E.
Venue
Neuropharmacology
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2009-01
Volume
56
Pages
263-278
ISSN
0028-3908 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2105511929
Cited by
81
References
168
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 10
FWCI
0.51
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Neuropharmacology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • scholarworks - UTEP (The University of Texas at El Paso) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA021274, R25DA033613)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Smoking Behavior and Cessation
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors Study
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
Keywords
adolescent nicotine use, nicotine dependence, mesolimbic dopamine system, ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, nicotine reward, nicotine withdrawal, glutamatergic excitation, GABAergic inhibition, developmental neuroscience, nicotine replacement therapy, tobacco initiation, addiction vulnerability
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Age Factors, Animals, Brain Chemistry, Disease Models, Animal, Dopamine, gamma-Aminobutyric Acid, Humans, Nicotine, Nucleus Accumbens, Tobacco Use Disorder, Ventral Tegmental Area, Nicotinic Agonists

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review