Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Behav Res Ther. 2011 Feb;49(2):92-8. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2010.11.003. Epub 2010 Nov 22.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is effectively treated with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) with patients making eye movements during recall of traumatic memories. Many therapists have replaced eye movements with bilateral beeps, but there are no data on the effects of beeps. Experimental studies suggest that eye movements may be beneficial because they tax working memory, especially the central executive component, but the presence/degree of taxation has not been assessed directly. Using discrimination Reaction Time (RT) tasks, we found that eye movements slow down RTs to auditive cues (experiment I), but binaural beeps do not slow down RTs to visual cues (experiment II). In an arguably more sensitive "Random Interval Repetition" task using tactile stimulation, working memory taxation of beeps and eye movements were directly compared. RTs slowed down during beeps, but the effects were much stronger for eye movements (experiment III). The same pattern was observed in a memory experiment with healthy volunteers (experiment IV): vividness of negative memories was reduced after both beeps and eye movements, but effects were larger for eye movements. Findings support a working memory account of EMDR and suggest that effects of beeps on negative memories are inferior to those of eye movements.
创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）可以通过眼动脱敏再处理（EMDR）有效治疗，患者在回忆创伤性记忆时会进行眼球运动。许多治疗师已经用双侧蜂鸣代替了眼球运动，但关于蜂鸣的效果还没有数据。实验研究表明，眼球运动可能是有益的，因为它们会增加工作记忆的负担，特别是中央执行成分，但目前还没有直接评估其负担的程度。通过辨别反应时（RT）任务，我们发现眼球运动会减慢听觉线索的 RT（实验 I），但双耳蜂鸣不会减慢视觉线索的 RT（实验 II）。在一项使用触觉刺激的、更敏感的“随机间隔重复”任务中，直接比较了蜂鸣和眼球运动对工作记忆的影响。在蜂鸣期间 RT 会减慢，但眼球运动会产生更强的影响（实验 III）。在一项健康志愿者的记忆实验中也观察到了相同的模式（实验 IV）：在眼球运动和蜂鸣后，负面记忆的生动度都会降低，但眼球运动的效果更大。这些发现支持了 EMDR 的工作记忆理论，并表明蜂鸣对负面记忆的影响不如眼球运动。
