Pouliot Sandra, Jones-Gotman Marilyn
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, 3801 University Street, Montreal H3A 2B4, Québec, Canada.
Neuropsychologia. 2008 Mar 7;46(4):1124-34. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.10.017. Epub 2007 Oct 30.
Recently, we found that healthy young adults remember odors leading to large emotional reactions better than odors provoking smaller emotional reactions. Because the amygdala is believed to be critically implicated in memory for emotionally arousing information and because it is part of the primary olfactory area, we hypothesized that patients with a unilateral medial temporal-lobe resection including the amygdala would not show enhanced memory for arousing compared to nonarousing odors. We tested odor memory in 19 patients (10 left, 9 right) who had undergone a unilateral medial temporal-lobe resection including the amygdala (MTLR) for treatment of intractable epilepsy and 19 healthy control subjects. Healthy individuals and patients with left or right MTLR showed comparable subjective emotional reactions to odors. Similarly, healthy individuals and patients with MTLR remembered unpleasant odors better than pleasant ones. However, unlike healthy individuals, patients with MTLR did not show better memory for emotionally arousing odors compared to nonarousing ones. Patients undergoing a MTLR, whether in the left or right hemisphere, lose the specific memory advantage that odors causing strong emotional reactions normally have.
最近，我们发现健康的年轻人对引发强烈情绪反应的气味的记忆要比对引发较小情绪反应的气味的记忆更好。由于杏仁核被认为在对情绪唤起信息的记忆中起着关键作用，并且它是初级嗅觉区域的一部分，我们推测，接受了包括杏仁核在内的单侧内侧颞叶切除术的患者，与非唤起性气味相比，对唤起性气味不会表现出增强的记忆。我们对19名接受了包括杏仁核在内的单侧内侧颞叶切除术（MTLR）以治疗顽固性癫痫的患者（10名左侧，9名右侧）和19名健康对照者进行了气味记忆测试。健康个体以及接受左侧或右侧MTLR手术的患者对气味表现出相似的主观情绪反应。同样，健康个体和接受MTLR手术的患者对不愉快气味的记忆比对愉快气味的记忆更好。然而，与健康个体不同，接受MTLR手术的患者与非唤起性气味相比，对唤起性气味并未表现出更好的记忆。接受MTLR手术的患者，无论其病变在左侧还是右侧半球，都会失去气味通常所具有的、引发强烈情绪反应时的特定记忆优势。
