Department of Medical Image, College of Biomedical Engineering, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China.
Brain Res. 2013 Sep 19;1531:94-101. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2013.07.042. Epub 2013 Aug 2.
To study the neural mechanism for the impact of negative emotional distraction on working memory in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from exposure to motor vehicle accidents.
Twenty PTSD patients and 20 healthy subjects were recruited. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the effects of negative and neutral distractors on a delayed-response working memory task. All experiments were performed on a 3.0T MRI scanner, and the functional imaging data were analyzed using SPM8 software.
The PTSD group showed poorer performance than the control group when the negative distractors were presented during the delay phase of working memory. The functional imaging indicated that, in the presence of negative relative to neutral distractors, the PTSD group showed higher activation in the emotion processing regions, including amygdala, precuneus and fusiform gyrus, but lower activation in the inferior frontal cortex, insula and left supramarginal gyrus than the control group.
Based on the results that activation in the PTSD patients in the presence of negative distractors increased in the emotion-related brain regions but decreased in the working memory-related brain regions, we may conclude that the neural basis of working memory is impaired by negative emotion in PTSD patients.
研究车祸暴露后创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）患者负性情绪分心对工作记忆的影响的神经机制。
招募了 20 名 PTSD 患者和 20 名健康受试者。使用事件相关功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究负性和中性分心物对延迟反应工作记忆任务的影响。所有实验均在 3.0T MRI 扫描仪上进行，使用 SPM8 软件对功能成像数据进行分析。
在工作记忆的延迟阶段呈现负性分心物时，PTSD 组的表现明显劣于对照组。功能成像显示，与中性分心物相比，当呈现负性分心物时，PTSD 组在情绪处理区域（包括杏仁核、楔前叶和梭状回）的激活更高，而在额下回、岛叶和左缘上回的激活更低。
基于 PTSD 患者在呈现负性分心物时，与情绪相关的脑区的激活增加，而与工作记忆相关的脑区的激活减少的结果，我们可以得出结论，负性情绪会损害 PTSD 患者的工作记忆的神经基础。
