The influence of chlorpromazine and amylobarbitone on the recovery limb of the electrodermal response

Abstract

The paradoxical finding of Gruzelier and Hammond (1978) that the electrodermal half-recovery time of schizophrenic patients was shorter and therefore more pathological (cf. Mednick and Schulsinger, 1968) when patients were on chlorpromazine than when they were later withdrawn from drug might account for reports of shorter recovery limbs in medicated schizophrenic patients. Here the same phenomenon was found with normal volumteers when on chlorpromazine but not amylobarbitone in response to orienting tones preceding a conditioning sequence. Other drug influences on electrodermal activity were, in the main, consistent with previous reports.