Effects of Metrazol on Intellectual Functioning in Defectives

Numerous studies have evaluated the effects of drug administration to various groups of institutional inmates. The areas of mental illness and senility have been the traditional fields of endeavor. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in the use of drugs with patients who are mentally defective. Partly due to the lack of response manifested by these patients to the usual therapies, and in part due to an interest in basic research, investigators have sought to discover the effects of drugs on the behavior and psychological functioning of such individuals. Needless to say, the results have been conflicting. Glutamic acid (dicarboxylic alpha amino acid extracted from the casein of cow's milk), for example, recently has been the subject of a series of researches (3, 4, 5, 7) employing defective Ss. Arbitman (2), in reviewing the literature from 1943 to 1952, concluded that the present trend is to find no appreciable increase in the level of mental functioning with the administration of glutamic acid. However, he also has pointed out the lack of controls in many of the studies reported, and the need for carefully conducted follow-up studies. One of the most widely employed drugs in the treatment of problems of mental illness and senility has been metrazol (pentylenetetrazol) . Several studies (6, 8, 9) have acclaimed the beneficial effects of this drug on personality and social functioning; a few (1, 9) have indicated improved mental functioning. The beneficial effect of metrazol has been described as increasing the synthesis of acetylcholine, an acetic acid ester of choline normally present in many parts of the body and having such important physiological functions as the mediation of nerve impulses across a synapse. This action could aid in explaining the better mental functioning by ascribing it to greater neuronal efficiency. Glutamic acid, previously cited as being used in treating mental deficiency, has been described as a co-enzyme in the synthesis of acetylcholine and, therefore, it appears that these drugs may have a functional common denominator. In view of a possible action common to both metrazol and glutamic acid in their long-range, pharmacologic effects, the authors felt that a study evaluating the effect of metrazol on intellectual functioning of defectives might be of value. The present paper, then, reports the results of such a study

Borderline intellectual functioning · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Intellectual development · Psychiatry · Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder · Cholinesterase and Neurodegenerative Diseases · Psychology · Treatment of Major Depression