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document
Antisaccade and smooth pursuit eye movements in healthy subjects receiving sertraline and lorazepam . Patients suffering from some psychiatric and neurological disorders demonstrate abnormally high levels of saccadic distractibility when carrying out the antisaccade task . This has been particularly thoroughly demonstrated in patients with schizophrenia . A large body of evidence has been accumulated from studies of patients which suggests that such eye movement abnormalities may arise from frontal lobe dysfunction . The psychopharmacology of saccadic distractibility is less well understood , but is relevant both to interpreting patient studies and to establishing the neurological basis of their findings . Twenty healthy subjects received lorazepam 0.5 mg , 1 mg and 2 mg , sertraline 50 mg and placebo in a balanced , repeated measures study design . Antisaccade , no-saccade , visually guided saccade and smooth pursuit tasks were carried out and the effects of practice and drugs measured . Lorazepam increased direction errors in the antisaccade and no-saccade tasks in a dose-dependent manner . Sertraline had no effect on these measures . Correlation showed a statistically significant , but rather weak , association between direction errors and smooth pursuit measures . Practice was shown to have a powerful effect on antisaccade direction errors . This study supports our previous work by confirming that lorazepam reliably worsens saccadic distractibility , in contrast to other psychotropic drugs such as sertraline and chlorpromazine . Our results also suggest that other studies in this field , particularly those using parallel groups design , should take account of practice effects .
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Intervention_Pharmacological
sertraline
3310
Intervention_Pharmacological
lorazepam
3311
Intervention_Pharmacological
lorazepam 0.5 mg , 1 mg and 2 mg
3312
Intervention_Pharmacological
sertraline 50 mg
3313
Intervention_Control
placebo
3314
Intervention_Pharmacological
Lorazepam
3315
Intervention_Pharmacological
Sertraline
3316
Intervention_Pharmacological
lorazepam
3317
Intervention_Pharmacological
sertraline
3318
Outcome_Mental
direction errors in the antisaccade and no-saccade tasks
3319
Outcome_Other
no effect
3320
Outcome_Mental
these measures
3321
Outcome_Mental
direction errors and smooth pursuit measures
3322
Outcome_Mental
antisaccade direction errors
3323
Outcome_Mental
saccadic distractibility