Cognitive effects of lithium treatment in normal volunteers.

Patients taking lithium often report difficulties in concentration, memory, learning, and attention and many of these complaints are verified on psychometric testing. Laboratory tests of cognitive functions in healthy volunteers on chronic lithium demonstrate that disruptions in memory-learning processes are apparent at the time of memory retrieval. Subjects, following chronic lithium treatment, produce more errors of commission in remembering previously occurring events while errors of omission appear to be unaffected. These effects are different from those produced by other psychoactive drugs that can also selectively alter and disrupt cognitive processes.