PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/146396 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-06 and may be subject to change. EFFECTS OF DIAZEPAM ON ATTENTION AND MEMORY: A PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL APPROACH ПІСІ Agnieszka Unrug EFFECTS OF DIAZEPAM ON ATTENTION AND MEMORY: A PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Sociale Wetenschappen PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 3 juni 1997 des namiddags om 1.30 uur precies door AGNIESZKA UNRUG geboren op 21 juli 1961 te Krakow (Polen) NICI Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information Promotores: Prof. Dr. A.M.L. Coenen Prof. Dr. J. Kaiser - Jagiellonian University - Polen Co-promotor: Dr. E.L.J.M. van Luijtelaar Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. Dr. J.M.H. Vossen (voorzitter) Prof. Dr. Α. Kok - UvA Prof. Dr. A. Cools Unrug, Agnieszka Effects of diazepam on attention and memory: a psychophysiological and neuropsychological approach/ Agnieszka Unrug. Proefschrift Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (1997). -Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Engels, in het Nederlands en in het Pools. ISBN 90-373-0371-4 NICI Technical Report 97-03 © Agnieszka Unrug ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (DANKWOORD - PODZIÇKOWANIE) This dissertation has been made possible by many people's cooperation, support and encouragement. Here, I would like to express my deep appreciation to all people who contributed to the experiments in this dissertation and who supported my stay in The Netherlands. First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Jan Kaiser, Prof. Jo Vossen, Prof. Ton Coenen and Dr Gilles van Luijtelaarfor creating the possibility to do research and to prepare my PhD thesis in The Netherlands. I am very thankful Jan Kaiser for his invaluable comments, ideas, encouraging words and help with arranging all necessary things during my absence in Poland. I would like to express my enormous gratitude to Ton Coenen and Gilles van Luijtelaar for their ideas, discussions, comments, corrections but also for their effort to make my staying here nice, for their encouraging words, for supporting me during 'homesickness' and 'life' problems. I appreciate the fact, that Ton being informed about my accident, came immediately to a hospital. It was marvellous to be awaken from narcose and saw 'my Professor' sitting next to my bed Gilles, I want to thank you also for all your chats and for your helping hand given me whenever I needed. Moreover, I would like to thank Ton Coenen and Mr ATW Scholten for all arangements necessary for my stay at this university. I would like to thank all my colleagues from VFPfor all encouraging words, support and very friendly attitudes towards me. In order to express my gratitude I would like to say: 'bardzo dziekuje' and 'dank U wel' to all of you. I would like to thank Prof. Tadeusz Marekfor allowing me to conduct the experiment related to saccadic eye movement in the Department of Work Psychology and Ergonomics. I am very grateful to Jos Wittebrood and Willy van Schaijk as well as Hubert Voogd for their help to set up both ERPs experiments and for their assistance during conducting these experiments. I would like to thank Peter Hagoortfor allowing me to analyse my ERPs data in the Max Planck Institute; Colin Brown and Dorothée Chwillafor their assistance while I was using the ERPs program. I am very thankful Tinneke van Rijn for doing medical examination, necessary for my experiments, and all my subjects without whose participation this thesis would never have been written. I would like to thank Hanneke Receveur and my Father for correcting the English in the theoretical chapters. My appreciation is also expressed to Frans Gremmenfor his advises related to an analysis of the data and whose fruitful help is presented in almost all experimental chapters. I would like to express my gratitude to Giovanni ten Brink and Pierre Sourenfor their professional solving of all my computer 'disasters'. I would like also to thank Pierre for his enormous help which is possible to admire on the page 35 and 37 in this thesis. Andre van Wijk deserves here my special gratitude not only for his 'netwerk' help but also for a brief course about 'Mac's': '...if a caps lock is pressed I would never ever be able to tape my pass-word... '. I appreciate very much Jarek Bener role in conducting experiment ι described in Chapter 4, Bernadette Veldman and Egid Blezer help in collecting the data of the experiment presented in Chapter 7.1 am thankful Hannie Geelenfor being my hostess during my very first stay in The Netherlands. Mama, roztajqc sie na tak dlugo, cata moja tesknota do Ciebie i Babci stala sie motorem do napisania tej pracy. MamusTcu, bedqc tak daleko moglam na Ciebie zawsze liczyd. Dziekuje za wszystko! I would like to thank my Father and Zofiafor their encouraging words. I enjoyed, Tato, your efforts to meet me 'somewhere' in Europe and the time which we spent together in Amsterdam and France. I would like to thank both of you for your wonderful present. I am very grateful to Bob Boelhouwer for his translation of my English summary to Dutch. Bob, I thank you for all your support and all your effort to organise my free time. I can assure you that falling asleep in the cinema can happen not only to 'a Polish AiO' but also to a Dutch one during writing a very final chapter. Slaap lekker.... I would like to thank Jacqueline Hilgers for her top quality secretarial assistance, for the conscienious correction of the proofs, for een oventje (sorry Rob) and for many, many other things... I would like to thank Eia Kloszewska for the final (stylistic) touch in the Polish summary. I am thankful Martine Janzenfor her perfect tip: 'SSHN'. Iza, I would like simply to thank you for being my very special friend. I would like to thank Jurek Karczewski for his e-mails. I am thankful Przemek Jabloriski for his 'survival' lesson about 'Dutch way of living' by teaching me how to 'use' a bike. I thank also all my 'abandon' friends, especially Marina, Beata and Kasia for understanding that my social life was substituted for long time for 'writing', 'rewriting', 'correcting', 'submitting', 'resubmitting'... I thank Ania Janus-Sitarz for being a perfect reporter about all events related to our group of Polish friends. I would like to thank all, who in spite of my pronunciation of 'huis', muis' and other incredible words, were brave enough to understand my Dutch and, what is more important, speak Dutch to me - it counts 'after all' also for Hans Krijnen. I would like to thank Mrs Mira Skotnicka for allowing me to teach Polish children in the 'Poolse schooltje', which turned out to be even more exhausting than the preparation of the PhD but giving me also a lot of pleasure. и CONTENTS Chapter 1 General introduction 1 Chapter 2 Effects of diazepam and buspirone on reaction time of saccadic eye 11 movements Chapter 3 Influence of diazepam and buspirone on human heart rate and the 19 evoked cardiac response under varying cognitive load Chapter 4 Event related potentials elicited by auditory stimuli in a passive and 31 an active condition: effects of diazepam and buspirone on slow wave positi vity Chapter 5 Auditory event related potentials in neutral and oddball tasks: effects 41 of level of difficulty and motor responses on P300 and late slow wave positivity Chapter 6 Cognition and vigilance: differential effects of diazepam and 55 buspirone on memory and psychomotor performance Chapter 7 Vigilance and memory: effects of the tranquillizer diazepam and the 63 stimulant methylphenidate Chapter 8 The relation between the diazepam-induced level of vigilance and 73 cognitive processes. Discussion and conclusions Summary in English 95 Summary in Dutch (Samenvatting) 101 Summary in Polish (Streszczenie) 109 References 115 Curriculum Vitae 127 List of publications 129 ш dia Мату i Babci voor Bob CHAPTER 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction The central theme of this thesis is an evaluation of diazepam-induced deficits in cognitive processes. More specifically, the experimental work presented in this thesis is devoted to the analysis of attention, memory, motor performance, and the subjective evaluation of the level of vigilance under the influence of diazepam. Two specific questions were investigated in the thesis. The first question was whether the sedative effects of diazepam resulting in a decreased level of vigilance can be held responsible for diazepam-induced amnesia. The second one was whether diazepam-induced memory impairment is related to other disturbances in information processing. The analysis of effects of diazepam (Valium®) was made in the comparison with another anxiolytic drug - buspirone (Buspar®), which lacks sedative effects that are characteristic for diazepam. The aim of this comparison was to indicate whether the amnestic effects are related to a decreased level of vigilance or to the anxiolytic effects of the drugs. The effects of diazepam on memory were also compared with those of a stimulant drug - methylphenidate (Ritalin®), a drug enhancing the level of vigilance. The aim of this comparison was to evaluate the relationship between the level of vigilance and memory processes. Next, the effects of diazepam on other aspects of information processing were investigated. Saccadic reaction time (SRT), heart rate (HR) and evoked cardiac response (ECR), event related potentials (ERPs), the performance of memory, attention and concentration, as well as motor performance test and subjective evaluation of vigilance, were used as dependent variables.