Trial Outcomes & Findings for Nicotine Treatment of Cognitive Decline in Down Syndrome (NCT NCT01778946)

Nicotine Treatment of Cognitive Decline in Down Syndrome

Maximum transdermal nicotine dosage able to be maintained stably by participants.

Psychomotor speed was measured by the performance on the CANTAB simple reaction time task

The investigators will measure daily low-moderate dose nicotine treatment's changes to electrophysiological markers of memory performance using an incidental memory task. The incidental memory task consists of presenting participants with a series of 60 complex images, 50 of which are presented once, and 10 which are repeated 5 times each. The task measures the presence of the late positive potential (LPP), a positive deflection over the parietal cortex which is elevated for the repeated compared to the singly presented images. The presence of this potential is indicative of improved recognition memory.

Performance on the Conners' Continuous Performance Test, which is a measure of sustained attention. The main outcome measure was commission errors, which measures attention failures. The commission errors are calculated as T-scores. Higher T-scores indicate worse performance, lower T-scores indicate better performance. Average performance is a score of 50, with a standard deviation of 10.

Episodic memory performance was assessed by the Buschke Selective Reminding Task. The main outcome metric of this test was the total words correctly recalled.

Arousal and vigilance were measured by the Critical Flicker Fusion task. The task used at perceptual performance on ascending and descending frequencies of the task.