Hirshman Elliot, Fisher Julia, Henthorn Thomas, Arndt Jason, Passannante Anthony
Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Brain Cogn. 2003 Dec;53(3):427-32. doi: 10.1016/s0278-2626(03)00214-8.
Studies of organic anterograde amnesia have been central to the development of theories of implicit memory. Pharmacological amnesia provides an additional method for exploring implicit memory, allowing for the experimental manipulation of amnesia and the testing of more participants. A significant concern with pharmacological amnesia is whether its cognitive effects are specific to explicit memory. The current research examines the effects of the benzodiazepine, midazolam, on retrieval from semantic memory and encoding in explicit memory. We focus on midazolam because it holds significant advantages over other benzodiazepines in inducing pharmacological amnesia and prior research suggests it may be useful for testing theories of implicit memory. Our results demonstrate that midazolam does not impair accuracy of retrieval from semantic categories, even when it produces anterograde amnesia for retrieved category items on a later recall test. These results suggest ways midazolam can be used to help test theories of implicit memory.
对器质性顺行性遗忘的研究一直是内隐记忆理论发展的核心。药理学遗忘症为探索内隐记忆提供了一种额外的方法，它允许对遗忘症进行实验性操纵，并能测试更多的参与者。药理学遗忘症的一个重要问题是其认知效应是否特定于外显记忆。当前的研究考察了苯二氮䓬类药物咪达唑仑对语义记忆提取和外显记忆编码的影响。我们关注咪达唑仑是因为它在诱发药理学遗忘症方面比其他苯二氮䓬类药物具有显著优势，并且先前的研究表明它可能有助于测试内隐记忆理论。我们的结果表明，即使咪达唑仑在后续回忆测试中对所提取的类别项目产生顺行性遗忘，它也不会损害从语义类别中提取的准确性。这些结果提示了咪达唑仑可用于帮助测试内隐记忆理论的方法。
