Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
J Alzheimers Dis. 2017;60(4):1333-1349. doi: 10.3233/JAD-170233.
Emotional enhancement effects on memory have been reported to mitigate the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, relative to their manifestation in persons without pathologic aging, these effects may be reduced in magnitude or even deleterious, especially in tasks that more closely model ecologic memory performance. Based upon a synthesis of such reports, we hypothesized that in persons with AD low arousal positive stimuli would evoke relatively intact emotional enhancement effects, but that high arousal negative stimuli would evoke disordered emotional enhancement effects. To assess this, participants with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) presumed to be due to AD performed an emotionally-valenced short-term memory task while encephalography was recorded. Results indicated that for persons with MCI, high arousal negative stimuli led to working memory processing patterns previously associated with MCI presumed due to AD and dementia of the Alzheimer-type. In contrast, low arousal positive stimuli evoked a processing pattern similar to MCI participants' unaffected spouses. Our current findings suggest that low arousal positive stimuli attenuate working memory deficits of MCI due to AD.
情绪增强对记忆的影响被报道可以减轻阿尔茨海默病（AD）的病理生理学。然而，与没有病理老化的人相比，这些影响的幅度可能会降低，甚至是有害的，尤其是在更接近生态记忆表现的任务中。基于这些报告的综合分析，我们假设在 AD 患者中，低唤醒的积极刺激会引起相对完整的情绪增强效应，而高唤醒的消极刺激会引起紊乱的情绪增强效应。为了评估这一点，我们让患有和不患有轻度认知障碍（MCI）的参与者（假定是由于 AD 引起的）进行了一项带有情绪色彩的短期记忆任务，同时记录脑电图。结果表明，对于患有 MCI 的人来说，高唤醒的消极刺激导致了与 AD 和阿尔茨海默病型痴呆假定为 AD 引起的 MCI 相关的工作记忆处理模式。相比之下，低唤醒的积极刺激引起了与 MCI 参与者未受影响的配偶相似的处理模式。我们目前的研究结果表明，低唤醒的积极刺激可以减轻 AD 引起的 MCI 的工作记忆缺陷。
