Emotional Memory Impairment In Schizophrenia

Objective Emotional memory refers to emotion can impact the memory processing stages such as encoding, consolidation and retrieval. The memory modulation hypothesis proposes that the substrate for this emotional memory effect is an interaction between the amygdale and memory systems in the medial temporal lobe including the hippocampal complex, resulting in increased memory consolidation. Imaging studies in patients with schizophrenia demonstrate amygdala and hippocampus damage. In this study, by taking neuropsychological tests, aims to investigate (1) whether emotional memory is damaged in patients with schizophrenia and further explore the correlation between the emotional memory and clinical symptoms (2) to further explore the neural mechanism of emotional memory, if emotional memory damage in patients with schizophrenia, and provide indirect evidence for the memory-modulation hypothesis.Methods Forty schizophrenic patients and forty healthy subjects were given the emotional memory test such as rating the pictures, recall and recognation. All the patients were rated on Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).Results There was no significant difference between patients with schizophrenia and control subjects in rating the negative, neutral and positive pictures(P>0.05); Schizophrenic patients had worse recall for both negative and neutral scenes than control subjects at the 10 min and 72-hour tests(P<0.05); Patients with Schizophrenia showed a selective deficit in recognition for both positive and negative scenes compared to control subjects (P<0.05). Correlation analysis showed that PANSS negative symptoms had a negative correlation with recognition for both negative(r=-0.91, P<0.01) and positive (r=-0.38, P<0.05) scenes. There was a negative correlation between duration of illness and recall of negative scenes at 10 min (r=-0.33, P<0.05); recall of negative(r=-0.36, P<0.05) and positive (r=-0.36, P<0.05) scenes at 72 hours; recognition of negative scenes (r=-0.34, P<0.05).Conclusion Schizophrenic patients have a general impairment of emotional memory, but there was no difference between patients and controls in rating the pictures, the results provide indirect evidence for the -modulation hypothesis; and the damage of emotional memory in schizophrenic patients is related to negative symptoms and duration of illness.