A common role for psychotropic medications: memory impairment

The psychopathologic profile of mental disorders is very diverse and psychotropic medications used to treat them differ in their chemical structure. Nevertheless, these drugs share these four characteristics: delayed onset of clinical response, not one of them can be said to cure, there is a high number of non-responders, and the mechanism responsible for their therapeutic action is not known. It is hypothesized that the action of psychotropic medications is memory impairment, understanding memory as the trace left in the nervous system not only by individual experiences but also by genetic and epigenetic phenomena. It is suggested that it would be beneficial to translate some research strategies from the neurobiology of learning and memory to the study of the effects of psychotropic medications. The hypothesis is briefly assessed according to the following three criteria: (a) the comparison between the molecular effects of psychotropic medications and the so-called molecular biology of learning and memory, (b) the effects of these drugs, preferentially after chronic use, on memory tests, and (c) the effects of drugs that impair memory on tests used for screening psychotropic medications. Finally, some general suggestions for future research are pointed out.