['Clinically, nicotine improves attention, but this has proven difficult to demonstrate preclinically. We tested nicotine in Sprague-Dawley (SD) and Lister hooded (LH) rats in the five-choice serial reaction time task. Since SD rats demonstrate lower asymptotic performance than LH rats, we surmised that nicotine would only improve performance in this strain.', 'Rats were placed in operant chambers 10 min after nicotine treatment (0.001-0.2 mg/kg).', 'Nicotine dose-dependently increased correct responses only in SD rats (approximately 20% at the highest dose). By contrast, nicotine dose-dependently increased omission errors and reduced trials completed in both strains of rat, and dose-dependently reduced tray responses in SD rats.'] Are nicotine-induced enhancements in the five-choice serial reaction time task in rats strain-dependent?