Citation

Sahgal A, Wright C, Ferrier IN. Psychopharmacology 1986; 90(1): 58-63.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

3094063

Abstract

It has been suggested that vasopressin (VP) and its analogues such as desamino-D-arg8-vasopressin (DDAVP) affect cognitive (including mnemonic) and attentional processes in man. We describe the effects of DDAVP and ethanol (EtOH) on young, healthy human volunteers, using a recently developed visual search task which assesses attention and vigilance. Over a 1-h session, the subject has to detect the occurrence of certain digits in a long list of random characters. A low dose of EtOH (0.33 ml/kg) tended to improve, and a higher dose (1.0 ml/kg) disrupted performance. DDAVP (20 or 60 micrograms/subject) had no effect whatsoever. It is concluded that intranasal administration of the peptide analogue does not markedly affect attention performance in human subjects.

Language: en