Mood-independent aberrancies of word responses and action of lithium on their repetition in manic depressed illness.

Following a preceding study, two samples of patients, one French (N = 20) and one American (N = 29), from two affective disorders clinics, were given free word-association tests consisting of two successive presentations of the same list of stimulus words separated by a 15 minute interval. On the one hand, commonness of word responses was not affected by changes of mood, and consequently aberrancies in associative processes may be a trait of persons with bipolar affective disorders. On the other hand, repetition of responses was directly correlated with lithium concentration in plasma, which allowed a prediction of the success of lithium therapy.

Effects of lithium carbonate on associative productivity and idiosyncrasy in bipolar outpatients.

To determine the effect of lithium carbonate on the productivity and idiosyncrasy of written associations of euthymic outpatients with affective disorder, the authors assessed 22 patients at weekly intervals during lithium treatment, 2 consecutive weeks of placebo, and 2 consecutive weeks after lithium was resumed. Lithium discontinuation produced a significant increase in associational productivity and a demonstrable increase in associative idiosyncrasy, and restoration of lithium dose significantly reversed both effects. The results suggest that lithium may affect the underlying neuropsychological functions critical to the ability to generate associations and indicate the need for further study of lithium's effects on these and other functions that may relate to neuropsychological and creative processes.

Aftereffects of lithium-conditioned stimuli on consummatory behavior.

Exposure to taste or spatial cues previously paired with lithium administration resulted in more drinking during a test session started 15 min. later than did exposure to stimuli previously presented in the absence of drug treatment (Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5). This outcome reflected an elevation of intake above baseline levels (Experiment 1) and required the presence of the lithium-paired cues rather than merely a history of lithium injections (Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5). The increased drinking was evident in tests with novel (Experiments 1, 4, and 5) as well as familiar (Experiment 2) palatable solutions and was not attributable to a greater degree of thirst in subjects exposed to the lithium-predictive cues (Experiments 4 and 5). The phenomenon was attenuated by extinction of the lithium-conditioned stimuli (Experiment 3). However, the increased drinking aftereffect probably was not a result of the conditioned aversiveness of lithium-predictive cues, since shock-conditioned stimuli did not elicit enhanced consumption (Experiment 5). Various explanations of the effect are discussed.

ACTH 4-10: a study of toxicological and behavioral effects in an aging sample.

Placebo and ACTH 4-10 (in ascending dosages from 15 to 60 mg) were administered subcutaneously to normal aging subjects (mean, 65.6 years). Measurements were obtained for EEG, EKG, SMA-12, urine, and blood pressure. Behavioral tasks measuring reaction time (RT), short-term memory, perceptual speed, and motor speed were administered. There were no pre- to post-injection changes in SMA-12, urine, EEG, and EKG. There was an improvement in RT time that was dose related. These data indicate that ACTH 4-10 is (1) safe to administer to an aging population and (2) combined with data on young adults suggest that it may act on the attentional/arousal processes. Results suggest that ACTH 4-10 may have stimulant-like properties on behavior without effecting the CNS and cardiovascular system.

Impairment of shock avoidance learning after long-term alcohol ingestion in mice.

Chronic alcohol consumption impaired the learning of a two-way shuttle box avoidance task in mice 10 to 14 days after the discontinuation of ethanol in the diet. Control groups received laboratory chow ad libitum or were pair-fed with the alcohol-consuming mice by diets containing isocaloric amounts of sucrose. The performance of the two control groups was indistinguishable from each other, and only the ethanol-consuming mice performed poorly. It was therefore concluded that alcohol consumption per se and not a nutritional deficiency was responsible for the impairment of learning.