Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Magdeburg, Leipziger Straße 44, 39120, Magdeburg, Germany.
Department of Neurology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 8;10(1):21453. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-78222-4.
Experimental evidence in rodents and humans suggests that long-term memory consolidation can be enhanced by the exploration of a novel environment presented during a vulnerable early phase of consolidation. This memory enhancing effect (behavioral tagging) is caused by dopaminergic and noradrenergic neuromodulation of hippocampal plasticity processes. In translation from animal to human research, we investigated whether behavioral tagging with novelty can be used to tackle memory problems observed in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). 34 patients with ADHD and 34 typically developing participants (age 9-15 years) explored either a previously familiarized or a novel virtual environment 45 min after they had learned a list of 20 words. Participants took a free recall test both immediately after learning the word list and after 24 h. Patients who explored a familiar environment showed significantly impaired memory consolidation compared to typically developing peers. Exploration of a novel environment led to significantly better memory consolidation in children and adolescents with ADHD. However, we did not observe a beneficial effect of novel environment exploration in typically developing participants. Our data rather suggested that increased exploration of a novel environment as well as higher feelings of virtual immersion compromised memory performance in typically developing children and adolescents, which was not the case for patients with ADHD. We propose that behavioral tagging with novel virtual environments is a promising candidate to overcome ADHD related memory problems. Moreover, the discrepancy between children and adolescents with and without ADHD suggests that behavioral tagging might only be able to improve memory consolidation for weakly encoded information.
实验证据表明，在巩固过程的脆弱早期阶段，通过探索新环境可以增强长期记忆的巩固。这种记忆增强效应（行为标记）是由海马体可塑性过程中的多巴胺能和去甲肾上腺素能神经调制引起的。在从动物研究到人类研究的转化中，我们调查了新颖性的行为标记是否可用于解决注意力缺陷/多动障碍（ADHD）儿童和青少年观察到的记忆问题。 34 名 ADHD 患者和 34 名典型发育参与者（9-15 岁）在学习了 20 个单词列表后 45 分钟，分别探索了以前熟悉的或新的虚拟环境。参与者在学习单词列表后立即以及 24 小时后进行自由回忆测试。与典型发育的同龄人相比，探索熟悉环境的患者记忆巩固明显受损。探索新环境可显著改善 ADHD 儿童和青少年的记忆巩固。但是，我们没有观察到探索新环境对典型发育参与者的有益作用。我们的数据表明，增加对新环境的探索以及更高的虚拟沉浸感会损害典型发育儿童和青少年的记忆表现，而 ADHD 患者则不是这样。我们提出，使用新的虚拟环境进行行为标记是克服 ADHD 相关记忆问题的有前途的候选方法。此外，ADHD 患者和无 ADHD 患者之间的差异表明，行为标记可能仅能够改善弱编码信息的记忆巩固。
