Abstract
Effects of a single dose of diazepam on expectancy in voluntary subjects: Gender-differences. This experiment's goal was to evaluate sequelae of a nocturnal ingestion of a single 10 mg. dose of diazepam on expectancy 11 hours after intake of the medication. A sample of 42 young, healthy subjects (21 females and 21 males) moved through three experimental conditions (control, placebo and diazepam) following a counterbalanced plan. Reaction time (RT) to unexpected stimuli was quantified. It was found that diazepam decreased expectancy; this deterioration was greater in the female sample than in the males, which demonstrates the need to adapt the doses of benzodiazepines depending on the gender at the moment of prescribing these psychoactive drugs. There appear possible explanations of these differences from the relation between sexual hormones and benzodiazepines.
