Human memory and benzodiazepine-induced amnesia : the effect of two different types of anxiolytics on memory performance in mice

Abstract

Many theories have been formulated to explain memory from the functional viewpoint. It has frequently been fractionated into short-term and long-term components (Waugh and Norman, 1965; Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) although there is disagreement about whether apparent differences between the two components reflect the existence of two different storage systems or a single general memory system with different types of encoding (Listcr, 1985). It is clear that, despite the successes obtained, the multi-store approach can no longer be regarded as an adequate theoretical conceptualisation of the architecture of the memory system (Eysenck, 1988). However, this oversimplification can provide a useful approach for describing the amnesic effects of benzodiazepines.