Nantes Université, Univ Angers, Laboratoire de psychologie des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France.
Clinical Gerontology Department, CHU Nantes, Nantes, France.
Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 2023 Nov;28(6):437-449. doi: 10.1080/13546805.2023.2275337. Epub 2023 Nov 30.
While affective disturbances are a key symptomatic indicator of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), little is known about how patients process the emotional load of their autobiographical (i.e. personal) memories.
We assessed the interplay of emotional regulation and autobiographical memory by inviting 18 bvFTD and 20 control participants to remember past personal events. For each memory, participants rated its emotional valence "then" (i.e. when the event has occurred) vs "now" (i.e. when retrieving the event).
Patients with bvFTD described their memories as neutral at both times (= .85), while control participants rated their memories as more positive during "then" than during "now" (= .013). Autobiographical retrieval triggered fewer emotional words (< .001) and less specificity (< .001) in bvFTD patients compared to control participants.
The lack of significant differences between the emotional characteristics during "then" than "now" in patients with bvFTD (and the flattening of both) may mirror their hampered ability for emotional generation, which may be associated with difficulties in reframing their past experiences to modify and adapt their meaning. The hampered emotional regulation in bvFTD may also be associated with an avoidance strategy and a passive attitude toward the past.
情感障碍是行为变异额颞叶痴呆（bvFTD）的一个关键症状指标，但人们对患者如何处理自传体记忆（即个人记忆）的情绪负荷知之甚少。
我们通过邀请 18 名 bvFTD 患者和 20 名对照组参与者回忆过去的个人事件，评估情绪调节和自传体记忆的相互作用。对于每个记忆，参与者都对其情绪效价进行了“当时”（即事件发生时）和“现在”（即回忆事件时）的评定。
bvFTD 患者在两次评定中都将记忆描述为中性（=.85），而对照组参与者在“当时”比在“现在”时对记忆的评价更为积极（=.013）。与对照组参与者相比，bvFTD 患者在自传体记忆检索中使用的情绪词汇较少（<.001），特异性较低（<.001）。
bvFTD 患者在“当时”和“现在”之间的情绪特征没有显著差异（并且两者都趋于平坦），这可能反映了他们在情绪产生方面的能力受损，这可能与他们难以重新构建过去的经历以改变和适应其意义有关。bvFTD 患者的情绪调节受损也可能与对过去的回避策略和被动态度有关。
