Abstract
The effects of 0.2 mg/kg orally administered diazepam and of a placebo on explicit memory, implicit and knowledge memory were assessed using a free recall task, a word-stem completion task and two category-generation tasks. Twenty four healthy volunteers took part in this double-blind study. Diazepam impaired explicit but not implicit memory. The drug also spared knowledge memory. Explicit memory was linked with the diazepam-induced sedation and with the self-rated affective load of to-be remembered words, but implicit memory was not. The diazepam-induced dissociation between explicit and implicit memory supports the notion of two distinct forms of memory and reproduced the dissociation observed in organic amnesia.
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Danion, JM., Zimmermann, MA., Willard-Schroeder, D. et al. Diazepam induces a dissociation between explicit and implicit memory. Psychopharmacology 99, 238–243 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00442815
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00442815