The psychopharmacological approach to the study of memory involves a systematic examination of the behavioral changes that occur following the administration of psychoactive drugs. This approach complements neuropsychological research in its neurobiological approach to the study of learning and memory. Most psychoactive drugs produce reversible effects in the central nervous system, allowing subjects to be used as their own controls. The ability to evaluate memory performance in both a drugged and an undrugged state is particularly useful in human studies, where the number of subjects can be limited. An additional advantage of this approach is that using the same subjects as both the control and experimental groups (within-subjects design) is a much more powerful way to detect small drug effects. Using a within-subjects experimental design is particularly useful for evaluating memory, because there can be substantial differences in baseline performance among individuals.

Studies of...