Unlike diazepam, lorazepam has repeatedly been shown to impair perceptual priming as well as explicit memory. To determine whether this deleterious effect was due to an impairment in acquisition of information, 60 healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to five treatment groups (placebo, lorazepam 0.026 or 0.038 mg/kg, diazepam 0.2 or 0.3 mg/kg) and successively performed perceptual priming tasks and a free-recall task. Priming performance on information learned before or 2 h after drug administration, i.e. at the peak concentration of lorazepam, was assessed under the influence of the drugs, using a picture-fragment and a word-stem completion task. Free-recall performance was altered by both drugs. Lorazepam decreased priming performance when information was acquired after, but not before, drug administration, indicating that the drug alters the acquisition of information. Lorazepam also impaired the ability to identify fragmented pictures, but there was no evidence that this perceptual effect accounts for the priming impairment. Surprisingly, diazepam also decreased priming when information was acquired after drug administration, suggesting that, at least in certain circumstances, the two benzodiazepines may exert similar effects on priming measures.

No abstract

The PALMFlexS study is a pragmatic interventional study compared with randomized controlled trials, conducted in a large, more representative sample of patients with schizophrenia, and designed specifically to mimic real-world clinical situations. The findings support the results from randomized controlled studies. They also demonstrate that a clinically relevant treatment response is possible in patients who are considered to be clinically stable by their physician, supporting the use of flexibly dosed PP in such patients. Clinical trials.gov number: NCT01281527.