Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, USA.
J Neuropsychol. 2019 Mar;13(1):136-146. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12124. Epub 2017 Apr 17.
Deficits in memory have been suggested as an influential mechanism of anhedonia, because while pleasant experiences may be enjoyed in-the-moment, the cognitive processes involved in reporting anticipated or remembered enjoyable experiences is thought to be impaired. This study will determine whether any aspects of memory, including visual memory, verbal memory or working memory, are significantly predictive of anhedonia in a sample of schizophrenia, psychotic bipolar disorder and healthy controls.
The study included 38 individuals with schizophrenia, 19 individuals with bipolar disorder with psychosis, and 43 age-matched healthy controls. All participants completed a self-report social and physical anhedonia questionnaire along with a cognitive screening battery, which assessed the domains of attention/vigilance, working memory, verbal learning, visual learning, and reasoning and problem-solving.
Anhedonia scores were regressed onto domain scores to determine which areas of cognition uniquely predicted level of anhedonia in each group. For the schizophrenia group, physical anhedonia was significantly predicted by worse visual memory performance. The regression models did not find significant cognitive predictors of physical or social anhedonia in the bipolar disorder or control groups.
This study found a significant relationship between visual memory and physical anhedonia in schizophrenia patients that was not present in a sample of psychotic bipolar patients or healthy controls, adding to an accumulating body of evidence that visual memory is related to anhedonia in schizophrenia. This relationship may be explained by underlying abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex in schizophrenia.
记忆缺陷被认为是快感缺失的一个影响机制，因为虽然当下可能会享受愉快的体验，但报告预期或记忆中愉快体验所涉及的认知过程被认为是受损的。本研究将确定在精神分裂症、精神病性双相障碍和健康对照组的样本中，记忆的任何方面，包括视觉记忆、言语记忆或工作记忆，是否对快感缺失有显著的预测作用。
该研究纳入了 38 名精神分裂症患者、19 名伴有精神病性症状的双相障碍患者和 43 名年龄匹配的健康对照组。所有参与者都完成了一份自我报告的社交和身体快感缺失问卷，以及认知筛查测试，该测试评估了注意力/警觉、工作记忆、言语学习、视觉学习、推理和解决问题等领域。
将快感缺失评分回归到各领域评分，以确定认知的哪些领域可以独特地预测每个组的快感缺失水平。对于精神分裂症组，视觉记忆表现越差，身体快感缺失的程度就越严重。在双相障碍或对照组中，回归模型没有发现认知对身体或社交快感缺失有显著的预测作用。
本研究发现精神分裂症患者的视觉记忆与身体快感缺失之间存在显著关系，而在精神病性双相障碍患者或健康对照组中则没有，这进一步证明了视觉记忆与精神分裂症中的快感缺失有关。这种关系可能是由精神分裂症患者眶额皮层的潜在异常引起的。
