Librium Therapy and Electroencephalographic Correlates

Effects of anxiety-relieving drugs on unit discharges in hippocampus, reticular midbrain, and pre-optic area in the freely moving rat

“…The claim has been made that at low doses meprobamate has significant effects on limbic structures before excitability in the midbrain reticular formation, or before the cortex shows marked changes (KLETZIN and SWAN, 1959). WINFIELD and AIVAZIAN (1961), GIBBS and GIBBS (1962), ROLDAN and ESCOBAR (1961), SCHALLECK and KUEHN (1965), HERNANDEZ-PEON et al (1964), and REQUIN et al (1963) have been reported fast EEG activity both in patients and animals treated with chlordiazepoxide even though behaviorally the subjects showed relaxation. Thus, there are data suggesting that chlordiazepoxide does not primarily act on the structures associated with sleep-wakefulness mechanisms, but on those implicated generally in the modulation of emotional behavior, and that, far from causing sedation as evidenced by EEG synchrony and decreased amplitude of evoked responses from stimulation of the mesencephalic reticular formation, it often causes EEG desynchronization not always associated with motor hyperactivity.…”

Iatrogenic epilepsy due to antidepressant drugs

“…One possible mechanism might be via abnormalities of plasma lipids, and therefore a further study has been carried out which forms the subject of a separate report (Pearce and Aziz, 1969 Kiloh, Davison, and Osselton (1961) found that imipramine in therapeutic doses increased the frequency of attacks in epileptic patients, and that in large doses it precipitated attacks in non-epileptics, and occasionally therapeutic doses had the same effect. Amitriptyline, introduced in 1960, was found to have anticonvulsant properties in animals (Vernier, 1961), and Winfield and Aivazian (1962) reported that this drug had no effect on the electroencephalogram (E.E.G.). Davison (1965) reported that intravenous amitriptyline had an activating action on paroxysmal activity in the E.E.G.s of 11 out of 20 epileptics, and two patients who had taken overdoses of the drug developed convulsions.…”