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A systematic review of the pharmacological modulation of autobiographical memory specificity

Cawley, Emma; Piazza, Giulia; Das, Ravi K; Kamboj, Sunjeev K; (2022) A systematic review of the pharmacological modulation of autobiographical memory specificity. Frontiers in Psychology , 13 , Article 1045217. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1045217. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Over-general autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval is proposed to have a causal role in the maintenance of psychological disorders like depression and PTSD. As such, the identification of drugs that modulate AM specificity may open up new avenues of research on pharmacological modeling and treatment of psychological disorders. AIM: The current review summarizes randomized, placebo-controlled studies of acute pharmacological modulation of AM specificity. METHOD: A systematic search was conducted of studies that examined the acute effects of pharmacological interventions on AM specificity in human volunteers (healthy and clinical participants) measured using the Autobiographical Memory Test. RESULTS: Seventeen studies were identified (986 total participants), of which 16 were judged to have low risk of bias. The presence and direction of effects varied across drugs and diagnostic status of participants (clinical vs. healthy volunteers). The most commonly studied drug-hydrocortisone-produced an overall impairment in AM specificity in healthy volunteers [g = -0.28, CI (-0.53, -0.03), p = 0.03], although improvements were reported in two studies of clinical participants. In general, studies of monoamine modulators reported no effect on specificity. CONCLUSION: Pharmacological enhancement of AM specificity is inconsistent, although monaminergic modulators show little promise in this regard. Drugs that reduce AM specificity in healthy volunteers may be useful experimental-pharmacological tools that mimic an important transdiagnostic impairment in psychological disorders. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO, identifier CRD42020199076, https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42020199076.

Type: Article
Title: A systematic review of the pharmacological modulation of autobiographical memory specificity
Location: Switzerland
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1045217
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1045217
Language: English
Additional information: © 2022 Cawley, Piazza, Das and Kamboj. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: autobiographical, memory, modulation, pharmacological, specificity
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161596
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