Transdermal Scopolamine: Effects of Single and Repeated Patches upon Psychological Task Performance

Abstract

Scopolamine and placebo transdermal patches were applied on alternating days to 12 normal volunteer subjects. Psychological performance tasks, physiological assessments, a subjective feeling state questionnaire, and a sleep questionnaire were completed each day. Transdermal scopolamine produced significant decrements in memory task performance, daytime feelings of alertness, ease of waking, and alertness following waking, while resting heart rates were lowered. Significant drug × patch number interaction effects were present with memory for new information, letter cancellation omission errors, rapid visual information processing reaction time, and self-rated ease of getting to sleep, but there was no consistent pattern to the changes following successive patches. Visual problems (blurred vision, longer visual near point) increased following successive scopolamine patches, but the changes in task performance were not related to these visual changes.

Transdermal scopolamine: Effects upon psychological performance and visual functioning at sea

“…However the task they used had not been demonstrated to be sensitive to psychoactive drug (or other stressor) effects; also the long duration of each stimulus target (20 seconds) was not typical of vigilance measures, where stimulus duration is generally short (Mackworth, 1957). The decreased letter cancellation time in the present study has not been previously reported, since non-significant response time increases have been previously noted (Parrott, 1986a(Parrott, , 1987Parrott and Jones, 1985); although test materials, subject instructions, and test scoring, were constant across these studies. The data were therefore examined for a possible explanation, but none emerged.…”

“…With the psychological tests, letter cancellation omission errors were increased, while response times were decreased. The significant increase in omission errors has been reported in each land and sea trial using this measure (Parrott, 1986a(Parrott, , 1987Parrott and Jones, 1985), confirming that sustained attention is impaired with transdermal scopolamine, as it is with oral and parenteral scopolamine (Colquhoun, 1962, Lukomskya andNikolskay, 1971;Parrott, 1986a;Poulton and Edwards, 1974;Warburton, 1983, 1984). These attention decrements have occurred during two laboratory trials where smoking was restricted for 2 hours (30 minutes before testing, and 80-90 minutes during actual testing) (Parrott, I986a, 1987); and during two sea trials where smoking was restricted only during 10 minutes of testing (Parrott and Jones, 1985;present trial).…”

“…The psychological performance tests comprised code substitution and letter cancellation (Parrott, 1986a(Parrott, , 1987. Code substitution represents an information processing task; a series of letters was consecutively coded into numbers using a nine-item letter-number code.…”

“…Hordinsky et al (1982) reported an impairment with psychomotor tapping, while several other psychomotor and information processing tests were not affected. Parrott (1986aParrott ( , 1987 found unimpaired psychomotor and information processing performance, but sustained attention, memory for new information, and feelings of alertness were significantly affected. Parrott and Jones (1985) also reported a significant sustained attention decrement.…”

Is rivastigmine safe as pretreatment against nerve agents poisoning? A pharmacological, physiological and cognitive assessment in healthy young adult volunteers

“…Tests were selected based on their reported sensitivity to the central effects of cholinergic drugs like physostigmine, donepezil, scopolamine, atropine and caramiphen (Grö n et al, 2005;Levy et al, 1996;McNair et al, 1981;Parrott, 1987Parrott, , 1989Seppä lä and Visakorpi, 1983;Wesnes et al, 1987). Some of the tests were used for the assessment of the effect of rivastigmine in DLB (dementia with Lewy bodies) patients (Wesnes et al, 2002).…”