Rationale, design and conduct of a school-based anti-smoking intervention: the "PEPITES" cluster randomized trial.

Background: In France smoking initiation rates amongst 11 to 16 year-olds are worryingly high. Several studies show that early initiation to psycho-active substances is a strong predictor of tobacco addiction. Decreasing the age at which tobacco use starts represents a key challenge for reducing tobacco usage.

Effect of cigarette smoke on gustatory sensitivity, evaluation of the deficit and of the recovery time-course after smoking cessation.

Background: Study results have shown that chronic exposure to cigarette smoke affects the taste function in humans. However, neither the quantitative impact on taste sensitivity nor the time-course of taste recovery on stopping smoking have been precisely examined.

Methods: The experimental design included 2 phases, (i) a case-control phase comparing the taste sensitivity level measured by Electrogustometric (EGM) thresholds from various parts of the tongue (locus) between smokers ( = 83) and non-smokers ( = 48), (ii) a follow-up study looking at the taste sensitivity recovery in smokers after smoking cessation ( = 24) and compared with non-smokers.

Learning and memory dissociation in rats with lesions to the subthalamic nucleus or to the dorsal striatum.

The striatum and the subthalamic nucleus (STN) are the two main cortical inputs to the basal ganglia. Both structures are involved in motor and cognitive functions, particularly executive functions, known to rely mainly on fronto-basal ganglia circuits. The present work investigated the respective role of the dorsal part of the striatum (dST) and the STN by studying their involvement in learning and memory processes in two separate experiments.

Learning-dependent activation of Fra-1: involvement of ventral hippocampus and SNc/VTA complex in learning and habit formation.

Although the effect of overtraining on learning processes in rats has long been studied, only few studies have specifically assessed the differential involvement of brain areas in habit formation. We used the analysis of expression of the immediate early gene Fra-1 as a tool to differentiate the areas involved in training and overtraining. Behavioural experiments showed that instrumental performance (signalled and non-signalled instrumental tasks), but not pavlovian conditioned responses, were no longer under the control of the incentive value of the reward after overtraining.