Sodium Amytal and Eyelid Conditioning

Abstract

Sodium amytal has long been regarded as a physiologically inhibiting drug. It is widely used in clinical practice as a sedative and sleep-producing drug, although all of its precise pharmacological effects are not definitely established. It has also been suggested that sodium amytal produces an increase in extra-version, as manifest by an increase in communicativeness, etc. Thus Lindemann (1932) found that after receiving amytal, normal subjects report feeling of increased well-being, co-operativeness, serenity and friendship. Sodium amytal is also used for the reduction of manifest anxiety. Sargant and Slater (1954) cite many examples of its use for this purpose with neurotic subjects; they describe it as useful for “deconditioning to situations likely to produce anxiety”. Masserman (1938) reports that amytal apparently reduces the sympathetic activity in cats which normally results from faradic stimulation from the hypothalamus. It has also been shown to abolish conditioned fear responses in kittens (Bailey and Miller, 1952).The literature related to conditioning is enormous. Hilgard and Marquis (1940) alone have a 973 item reference list at the end of their book. It has been established that anxiety neurotics or anxious subjects condition better than normals (e.g. Welch and Kubis, 1947a, 1947b; Taylor, 1951; Spence and Taylor, 1953; Spence and Farber, 1953). In the terminology of Eysenck (1952, 1953), in which introversion–extraversion and neuroticism are two orthogonal dimensions, anxiety neurotics are part of the groups known as Dysthymics, i.e. they have high scores on both the introversion end of the introversion–extraversion dimension and on the dimension of neuroticism. On the other hand hysterics and psychopaths have been shown to have high scores on the extraversion end of the introversion–extraversion dimension and on the dimension of neuroticism. Figure 1 will make this clear.