Nicotine addiction: studies about vulnerability, epigenesis and animal models

This article is a summary about the current research of nicotine effects on the nervous system and its relationship to the generation of an addictive behavior. Like other drugs of abuse, nicotine activates the reward pathway, which in turn is involved in certain psychiatric diseases. There are individuals who have a high vulnerability to nicotine addiction. This may be due to genetic and epigenetic factors and/or the environment. In this review, we described some epigenetic factors that may be involved in those phenomena. The two animal models most widely used for studying the reinforcing effects of nicotine are: self-administration and conditioning place preference (CPP). Here, we emphasized the CPP, due to its potential application in humans. In addition, we described the locomotor activity model (as a measure of psychostimulant effects) to study vulnerability to drugs of abus