The Effect of Two Benzodiazepine Receptor Agonist Hypnotics on Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation

作者：Hall Porter Janine M; Schweitzer Paula K^*; Eisenstein Rhody D; Ahmed Hasan Ali H; Walsh James K

来源：Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2014, 10(1): 27-34.

DOI：10.5664/jcsm.3352

• Hypnotics
• memory consolidation
• sleep

Introduction: Numerous studies have demonstrated that sleep promotes memory consolidation, but there is little research on the effect of hypnotics on sleep-dependent memory consolidation. We compared bedtime administration of zolpidem-ER 12.5 mg (6- to 8-h duration of action), middle-of-the-night administration of zaleplon 10 mg (3- to 4-h duration of action), and placebo to examine the effect of different durations of hypnotic drug exposure on memory consolidation during sleep.
Methods: Twenty-two participants with no sleep complaints underwent 3 conditions in a counterbalanced crossover study: (1) zolpidem-ER 12.5 mg (bedtime dosing), (2) zaleplon 10 mg (middle-of-the-night dosing), and (3) placebo. Memory testing was conducted before and after an 8-h sleep period, using a word pair association task (WPT; declarative memory) and a finger-tapping task (FTT; procedural memory).
Results: ANOVA revealed a significant condition effect for the WPT (p = 0.025) and a trend for the FTT (p = 0.067), which was significant when sex was added to the model (p = 0.014). Improvement in memory performance following sleep was lower with bedtime dosing of zolpidem-ER compared to placebo and middle-of-the-night dosing of zaleplon. There were no differences between placebo and zaleplon.
Conclusions: The results suggest that in some circumstances hypnotics may have the potential to reduce the degree of sleep-dependent memory consolidation and that drug-free sleep early in the night may ameliorate this effect.

• 出版日期2014