[en] The effects of two benzodiazepines, diazepam (15 or 20 mg orally) and lorazepam (1.75 or 2.5 mg orally), and a placebo on explicit memory, lexical priming and perceptual priming were assessed using a freerecall, a word-completion and a picture-completion test. The picture-completion test included two different study conditions intended to manipulate the magnitude of the priming effect. Sixty healthy volunteers took part in this double-blind study. Free-recall performances were altered by both drugs. Lorazepam impaired word-completion and picture-completion performance, whereas diazepam only exhibited a deleterious effect on the more sensitive of the two measures of the picture-completion test. These results indicate that the two benzodiazepines have differential amnestic effects. It is suggested that these differential effects could be accounted for by a different cortical distribution of the two benzodiazepines.
Abadie P., Bisserbe J.C., Boulenger J.P., Travere J.M., Barre L., Petit M.C., Zarifian E., Baron J.C. (1991) Central benzodiazepine receptors: quantitative positron emission tomography study in healthy subjects and anxious patients. New concepts in anxiety, P., Briley, S.E., File, Macmillan, London; .
Ameer B., Greenblatt D.J. (1981) Lorazepam: a review of its clinical pharmacological properties and therapeutic use. Drugs 21:161-200.
Bowers J.S., Schacter D.L. (1990) Implicit memory and test awareness. J Exp Psychol: [Learn Mem Cogn] 16:404-416.
Brandt A.L., Oakes F.D. (1965) Preanesthesia medication: double-blind study of a new drug, diazepam. Anesth Analg 44:125.
Brown J., Lewis V., Brown M., Horn G., Bowes J.B. (1982) A comparison between transient amnesias induced by two drugs (diazepam and lorazepam) and amnesia of organic origin. Neuropsychologia 20:55-70.
Brown M.W., Brown J., Bowes J.B. (1989) Absence of priming coupled with substantially preserved recognition in lorazepam-induced amnesia. Q J Exp Psychol 41 A:599-617.
Brown S.S., Dundee J.W. (1968) Clinical studies of induction agents XXV: diazepam. Br J Anaesth 40:108-112.
Cermak L.S., Talbot N., Chandler K., Wolbarst L.R. (1985) The perceptual priming phenomenon in amnesia. Neuropsychologia 29:615-622.
Clark E.O., Glanzer M., Turndorf H. (1979) The pattern of memory loss resulting from intravenously administered diazepam. Arch Neurol 36:296-300.
Clarke P.R.F., Eccersley P.S., Frisby J.P., Thornton J.A. (1970) The amnesic effect of diazepam (Valium). Br J Anaesth 42:690-697.
Curran H.V. (1991) Benzodiazepines, memory and mood: a review. Psychopharmacology 105:1-8.
Danion J.M., Zimmermann M.A., Willard-Schroeder D., Grangé D., Singer L. (1989) Diazepam induces a dissociation between explicit and implicit memory. Psychopharmacology 99:238-243.
Danion J.M., Zimmermann M.A., Willard-Schroeder D., Grangé D., Welsch M., Imbs J.L., Singer L. (1990) Effects of scopolamine, trimipramine and diazepam on explicit memory and repetition priming in healthy volunteers. Psychopharmacology 102:422-424.
Danion J.M., Peretti S., Grangé D., Bilik M., Imbs J.L., Singer L. (1992) Effects of chlorpromazine and lorazepam on explicit memory, repetition priming and cognitive skill learning in healthy volunteers. Psychopharmacology 108:345-351.
Dundee J.W., McGowan W.A.W., Lilburn J.K., McKay A.C., Hegarty J.E. (1979) Comparison of the actions of diazepam and lorazepam. Br J Anaesth 51:439-446.
Fang J.C., Hinrichs J.V., Ghoneim M.M. (1987) Diazepam and memory: evidence for spared memory function. Pharmacol Biochem Behav 28:347-352.
Ghoneim M.M., Mewaldt S.P. (1975) Effects of diazepam and scopolamine on storage, retrieval and organizational processes in memory. Psychopharmacology 44:257-262.
Ghoneim M.M., Hinrichs J.V., Mewaldt S.P. (1984) Dose-response analysis of the behavioural effects of diazepam: I. learning and memory. Psychopharmacology 82:291-295.
Gottschaldt K. (1928) Uber den Einfluss der Erfahrung auf die Wahrnehmung von Figuren. Psychologische Forschung 8:18-317.
Graf P., Schacter D.L. (1985) Implicit and explicit memory for new associations in normal and amnesic subjects. J Exp Psychol [Learn Mem Cogn] 11:501-518.
Graf P., Squire L.R., Mandler G. (1984) The information that amnesic patients do not forget. J Exp Psychol [Learn Mem Cogn] 10:164-178.
Juilland A., Brodin D., Davidovitch C. Dictionnaire de la fréquence des mots français, Mouton, Paris; 1970.
Keane M.E., Gabrieli J.D.E., Fennema A.C., Growdon J.H., Corkin S. (1991) Evidence for a dissociation between perceptual and conceptual priming in Alzheimer's disease. Behav Neurosci 2:326-342.
Kothary S.P., Brown A.C.D., Pandit U.A., Saa S.K., Pandit S.K. (1981) Time course of antirecall effect of diazepam and lorazepam following oral administration. Anesthesiology 55:641-644.
Lister R. (1985) The amnesic action of benzodiazepines in man. Neurosci Behav Rev 9:87-94.
Lister R. (1991) The effects of benzodiazepines and 5-HT1A agonist on learning and memory. 5-HT1A agonists, 5-HT3 antagonists and benzodiazepines: their comparative behavioural pharmacology, R.J., Rodgers, S.J., Cooper, Wiley, New York; .
Mandelli M., Tognoni G., Garattini S. (1978) Clinical pharmacokinetics of diazepam. Clin Pharmacokinet 3:72-91.
Moscovitch M., Wincour G., McLaghan D. (1986) Memory as assessed by recognition and reading time in normal and memory-impaired people with Alzheimer's disease and other related disorders. J Exp Psychol Gen 115:331-347.
Richardson-Klavehn A., Bjork R.A. (1988) Measures of memory. Annual Review of Psychology 39:475-543.
Shimamura A.P. (1985) Problems with the finding of stochastic independence as evidence for multiple memory systems. Bull Psychon Soc 23:506-508.
Sieghart W., Eichinger A., Riederer P., Jellinger K. (1985) Comparison of benzodiazepine receptor binding in membranes from human or rat brain. Neuropharmacology 24:751-759.
Snodgrass J.A., Feenan K. (1990) Priming effects in picture fragment completion: support for the perceptual closure hypothesis. J Exp Psychol Gen 119:276-296.
Snodgrass J.A., Smith B., Feenan K. (1987) Fragmenting pictures on the Apple Macintosh computer for experimental and clinical applications. Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput 19:270-274.
Trifiletti R.R., Snowman A.M., Whitehouse P.J., Marcus K.A., Snyder S.H. (1987) Huntington's disease: increased number and altered regulation of benzodiazepine receptor complexes in frontal cerebral cortex. Neurology 37:916-922.
Tulving E., Schacter D.L. (1990) Priming and human memory systems. Science 247:301-306.
Tulving E., Schacter D.L., Stark H.A. (1982) Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. J Exp Psychol [Learn Mem Cogn] 8:336-342.
Warrington E.K., Weiskrantz L. (1970) Amnesic syndrome: consolidation or retrieval?. Nature 228:628-630.
