Effects of diazepam on cognitive processes in normal subjects.

The effects of 10 mg orally-administered diazepam on various aspects of cognition were examined in ten male subjects. Diazepam produced a subjective sense of cognitive impairment and impaired auditory vigilence, immediate recognition of twice presented words, and context-dependent free recall. There was a trend for a significant proportion of subjects to show impairment in delayed recognition of twice-presented words. There was no impairment of context-independent semantic memory, or of subjects' ability to judge how well they had performed on the free recall task. In fact, subjects' subjective sense of cognitive impairment was correlated with their performance on context-dependent memory tasks.