Acute effects of triazolam on false recognition.
Neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological techniques have been applied to the study of false recognition; however, psychopharmacological techniques have not been applied. Benzodiazepine sedative/anxiolytic drugs produce memory deficits similar to those observed in organic amnesia and may be useful tools for studying normal and abnormal memory mechanisms. The present double-blind, placebo-controlled repeated measures study examined the acute effects of orally administered triazolam (Halcion; 0.125 and 0.25 mg/70 kg), a benzodiazepine hypnotic, on performance in the Deese (1959)/Roediger-McDermott (1995) false recognition paradigm in 24 healthy volunteers. Paralleling previous demonstrations in amnesic patients, triazolam produced significant dose-related reductions in false recognition rates to nonstudied words associatively related to studied words, suggesting that false recognition relies on normal memory mechanisms impaired in benzodiazepine-induced amnesia. The results also suggested that relative to placebo, triazolam reduced participants' reliance on memory for item-specific versus list-common semantic information and reduced participants' use of remember versus know responses.
Mintzer
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Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Behavioral Biology Research Center, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, 5510 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA. mmintzer@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu
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D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D014151:Anti-Anxiety Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000187:drug effects*; D018592:Cross-Over Studies; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000187:drug effects*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000187:drug effects*; D014229:Triazolam / Q000494:pharmacology*
D014151:Anti-Anxiety Agents; D014229:Triazolam