King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2010 Nov;16(6):975-83. doi: 10.1017/S1355617710000913. Epub 2010 Aug 25.
There is disagreement regarding the underlying basis of confabulation and, in particular, whether emotional mechanisms influence the presence or the content of confabulations. In this study, we have examined the emotional content of confabulations and "true" memories given by 24 memory-disordered patients on two autobiographical memory tasks. Two judges made pleasant/neutral/unpleasant ratings. Although many of the "memories" were evaluated as "neutral", there was an enhanced level of statements rated as having affective content (either pleasant or unpleasant) amongst these patients' confabulations, compared with their "true" memories. This affective bias was present irrespective of whether patients had suffered focal pathology extending to the ventro-medial frontal cortex (VMFC) or other pathology. There was also a correlation between participants' self-evaluated mood-states and both true and false memories' affective content, suggestive of a mood congruency effect in both types of memory. In summary, there was an enhanced tendency to produce memories with affective content (pleasant and unpleasant) amongst confabulations (whether or not there was VMFC pathology). The affective content of both confabulations and true memories produced may relate, in part, to an individual's current mood-state.
对于虚构的潜在基础，特别是情绪机制是否会影响虚构的出现或内容，存在分歧。在这项研究中，我们检查了 24 名记忆障碍患者在两项自传体记忆任务中虚构和“真实”记忆的情绪内容。两名评判者对愉快/中性/不愉快进行了评分。尽管许多“记忆”被评为“中性”，但与他们的“真实”记忆相比，这些患者的虚构中有更多的陈述被评为具有情感内容（愉快或不愉快）。这种情感偏见存在于患者是否患有延伸到腹内侧前额叶皮质（VMFC）或其他病变的局灶性病变。参与者自我评估的情绪状态与真实和虚假记忆的情感内容之间也存在相关性，这表明两种类型的记忆都存在情绪一致性效应。总之，虚构（无论是否存在 VMFC 病变）中产生的具有情感内容（愉快和不愉快）的记忆的趋势增强。虚构和真实记忆产生的情感内容可能部分与个体当前的情绪状态有关。
