Capuron L, Lamarque D, Dantzer R, Goodall G
INSERM U.394, Institut François Magendie and Hôpital d'Instruction des Armées Robert Picqué, Bordeaux, France.
Psychol Med. 1999 Mar;29(2):291-7. doi: 10.1017/s0033291798007740.
Infectious diseases are accompanied by behavioural and psychological changes that suggest the implication of the central nervous system. Among them, cognitive alterations have been reported, but their specificity and implication in everyday life are still largely unclear. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate and specify the everyday memory disturbances in sick human subjects and to determinate the role of fever in the appearance of these alterations.
The study was carried out in a military training centre for naval recruits. Ninety-one volunteer subjects, healthy (N = 30) or suffering from flu-like syndrome, with (N = 29) or without fever (N = 32), participated in this experiment and were administered a cognitive test (the ERBMT) according to a cross-sectional design for assessing various aspects of everyday memory.
Sick subjects were specifically impaired in daily memory tasks that require the temporary management of a large amount of information. This impairment was similar for the feverish and apyretic sick subjects who both differed from the controls.
These findings suggest that infectious disease disturbs the complex cognitive processes that might be associated with attentional functions. Moreover, these results show that fever is not a necessary condition for the appearance of these cognitive disturbances.
传染病伴随着行为和心理变化，这表明中枢神经系统受到了影响。其中，认知改变已有报道，但其特异性及在日常生活中的影响仍很大程度上不清楚。本研究的目的是评估和明确患病人类受试者的日常记忆障碍，并确定发热在这些改变出现中的作用。
研究在一个海军新兵军事训练中心进行。91名志愿者受试者，包括健康者（N = 30）或患有流感样综合征者，有发热（N = 29）或无发热（N = 32），参与了本实验，并根据横断面设计接受了一项认知测试（ERBMT），以评估日常记忆的各个方面。
患病受试者在需要临时管理大量信息的日常记忆任务中存在特异性损害。发热和无发热的患病受试者的这种损害相似，且二者均与对照组不同。
这些发现表明，传染病会干扰可能与注意力功能相关的复杂认知过程。此外，这些结果表明，发热并非这些认知障碍出现的必要条件。
