A single dose of lamotrigine — a drug commonly used to prevent depressive episodes in bipolar disorder — may shift memory toward a more positive perception of events. This finding comes from researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Minho in Portugal, and the study was published in Psychological Medicine.

The experiment involved 36 healthy volunteers with no psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. Three hours after taking 300 mg of lamotrigine (or a placebo), participants completed a series of cognitive tests assessing how they perceived and remembered emotional information. It was found that those who received the drug remembered more positive personality-related words than negative ones. The placebo group showed no such effect.

This suggests that lamotrigine may influence how individuals process emotionally significant self-related information. However, the drug did not affect facial expression recognition, emotional word perception, or mood — its effect was specifically limited to memory.

Similar shifts in emotional memory have previously been observed with antidepressants, which are thought to signal the early onset of their therapeutic action. The lamotrigine study suggests that the drug may also influence cognitive mechanisms associated with depression, particularly in people with bipolar disorder, who tend to dwell on negative memories and self-perceptions.

The authors emphasize that these findings open up an intriguing possibility: lamotrigine might help stabilize mood not only through neurochemical pathways, but also by subtly modulating memory and self-perception.