Garcia Ronald G, Valenza Gaetano, Tomaz Carlos A, Barbieri Riccardo
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA.
Division of Women's Health, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
J Affect Disord. 2016 Jan 15;190:19-25. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2015.09.075. Epub 2015 Oct 13.
Previous studies suggest that autonomic reactivity during encoding of emotional information could modulate the neural processes mediating mood-congruent memory. In this study, we use a point-process model to determine dynamic autonomic tone in response to negative emotions and its influence on long-term memory of major depressed subjects.
Forty-eight patients with major depression and 48 healthy controls were randomly assigned to either neutral or emotionally arousing audiovisual stimuli. An adaptive point-process algorithm was applied to compute instantaneous estimates of the spectral components of heart rate variability [Low frequency (LF), 0.04-0.15 Hz; High frequency (HF), 0.15-0.4 Hz]. Three days later subjects were submitted to a recall test.
A significant increase in HF power was observed in depressed subjects in response to the emotionally arousing stimulus (p=0.03). The results of a multivariate analysis revealed that the HF power during the emotional segment of the stimulus was independently associated with the score of the recall test in depressed subjects, after adjusting for age, gender and educational level (Coef. 0.003, 95%CI, 0.0009-0.005, p=0.008).
These results could only be interpreted as responses to elicitation of specific negative emotions, the relationship between HF changes and encoding/recall of positive stimuli should be further examined.
Alterations on parasympathetic response to emotion are involved in the mood-congruent cognitive bias observed in major depression. These findings are clinically relevant because it could constitute the mechanism by which depressed patients maintain maladaptive patterns of negative information processing that trigger and sustain depressed mood.
先前的研究表明，在对情绪信息进行编码期间，自主反应可能会调节介导情绪一致性记忆的神经过程。在本研究中，我们使用点过程模型来确定对负面情绪的动态自主神经张力及其对重度抑郁症患者长期记忆的影响。
48名重度抑郁症患者和48名健康对照者被随机分配接受中性或情绪唤起性视听刺激。应用自适应点过程算法来计算心率变异性频谱成分的即时估计值[低频（LF），0.04 - 0.15赫兹；高频（HF），0.15 - 0.4赫兹]。三天后，受试者接受回忆测试。
在抑郁症患者中，观察到对情绪唤起性刺激的高频功率显著增加（p = 0.03）。多变量分析结果显示，在调整年龄、性别和教育水平后，刺激情绪段的高频功率与抑郁症患者回忆测试得分独立相关（系数0.003，95%置信区间，0.0009 - 0.005，p = 0.008）。
这些结果只能解释为对特定负面情绪诱发的反应，高频变化与积极刺激的编码/回忆之间的关系应进一步研究。
对情绪的副交感反应改变与重度抑郁症中观察到的情绪一致性认知偏差有关。这些发现具有临床相关性，因为它可能构成抑郁症患者维持触发和维持抑郁情绪的负面信息处理适应不良模式的机制。
