Acute effects of triazolam on false recognition.

Abstract

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.

• Authors: M Z Mintzer, R R Griffiths
• Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit) Vol. 28 Issue 8 Pg. 1357-65 (Dec 2000) ISSN: 0090-502X [Print] United States
• PMID: 11219963 (Publication Type: Clinical Trial, Controlled Clinical Trial, Journal Article, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.)

Chemical References

• Anti-Anxiety Agents
• Triazolam

Topics

• Adult
• Analysis of Variance
• Anti-Anxiety Agents (pharmacology)
• Cognition (drug effects)
• Cross-Over Studies
• Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
• Double-Blind Method
• Female
• Humans
• Male
• Memory (drug effects)
• Middle Aged
• Models, Psychological
• Psychomotor Performance (drug effects)
• Recognition, Psychology (drug effects)
• Triazolam (pharmacology)