Effects of ethanol and temazepam on performance in memory and psychomotor tasks: a dose-response comparison

✍ Scribed by B. Tiplady; H. Faineteau; A. Loganathan; M. Spiegelberg; Z. Taylor; P. Wright

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 140 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1077(199806)13:4<285::aid-hup997>3.0.co;2-y

✦ Synopsis

In order to compare the eects of ethanol and a benzodiazepine on psychomotor performance and memory, 15 subjects (nine male, six female) aged 20±27 years took part in a ®ve-period crossover study in which they received by mouth in randomised order: (1) ethanol 0 . 88 g/kg, maximum 66 g for males, 55 g for females;

(2) ethanol, 0 . 75 of condition 1; (3) temazepam 20 mg; (4) temazepam 15 mg; (5) placebo. Both drugs led to signi®cant subjective drunkenness and drowsiness; drunkenness was more marked for ethanol, drowsiness for temazepam. Psychomotor slowing in Digit/Symbol substitution tasks was similar for the two drugs. In the Four-Choice Reaction-Time Task, subjects on ethanol tended to respond faster during the sections of the task where a repetitive sequence of stimuli was given, while those on temazepam slowed down. In the sections with random stimulus sequences, both drugs led to slowing. Ethanol, but not temazepam, led to increased errors in this task. The eect of ethanol on long-term memory in the Buschke selective reminding task was very marked. The trend for temazepam was in the same direction, but not statistically signi®cant. All performance eects were dose-dependent, except the speeding on the Four-Choice task, where the two doses of ethanol had similar eects. These results show that dissociations occur between ethanol and temazepam, ethanol producing more errors at a similar degree of slowing of performance. The eects of ethanol on memory are particularly marked relative to its sedative eect.