Light up and see: enhancement of the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) by nicotine.

Both smoking and nicotine can facilitate cognitive efficiency in humans, however the exact mechanism underlying this improvement in cognitive performance is unclear. Nicotine-related improvements in visual task performance may stem from facilitation of the identification and encoding of rare deviant stimuli at early sensory levels. Visual processes at these early levels are thought to be indexed by the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), an event-related potential (ERP) measure of pre-conscious deviant detection.