Stress exposure in addicted individuals is known to provoke drug craving, presumably through a memory-like process, but less is known about the effects of stress on non-drug-related affective memory ...retrieval
per se in such individuals, which is likely to provide important insights into therapy for relapse. In present study, we explored the effect of stress on retrieval of neutral and emotionally valenced (positive and negative) words in abstinent heroin addicts. In present study, 28 male inpatient abstinent heroin addicts and 20 sex-, age-, education- and economic status-matched healthy control participants were assessed for 24
h delayed recall of valenced and neutral word lists on two occasions 4 weeks apart—once in a nonstress control condition, once after exposure to the Trier Social Stress Test in a counterbalanced design. In addition, attention, working memory, blood pressure, heart rate and salivary cortisol were assessed. We found acute stress at the time of word list recall enhanced retrieval of positively valenced words, but no effect on negative and neutral word retrieval in abstinent heroin addicts was observed. No changes were detected for attention and working memory. The stressor induced a significant increase in salivary free cortisol, blood pressure and heart rate. Stress can enhance non-drug-related positive memory in abstinent heroin addicts. Our findings will provide richer information in understanding dysregulation of their emotional memory processing under stress and hopefully provide insight into designing improved treatments for drug addiction.
A large literature supports a direct relationship between pain and depressive symptoms among various patient populations. Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) frequently experience both pain and ...depression. Despite this, no relationship between pain and depression has been found in MS. The present investigation explored the relationship between pain and depression in a sample of patients with MS. Consistent with cognitive theories of depression, results supported the hypothesis that pain would only contribute to depression when MS patients exhibited a concomitant cognitive vulnerability. Cognitive vulnerability to depression was measured using a performance based affective memory bias (AMB) task. Patients with high levels of pain and negative AMB reported more depressive symptoms compared to patients with pain and positive AMB. Implications for the identification and treatment of depression in MS are discussed.
Nesse artigo apresentamos a experiência da construção, na escola, de um espaço para o afeto. Em tal espaço, através da atividade artística, torna-se possível trabalhar perdas, cultivar segredos, ...sonhos e desejos. Espaço-lugar que permite a construção de um olhar sensível para as histórias de cada um e para a memória coletiva. A dinâmica envolvida na proposta expressa uma dimensão do ensino de arte na atualidade, como espaço de atuação entre a objetividade e a subjetividade no trabalho com os alunos. Nesta sintonia, durante as aulas de arte que configuraram a experiência aqui analisada, alinhávamos histórias dos participantes com os fios da experiência estética, cruzando referências das culturas africana e indígena com a tradição das bordadeiras, que tecem a sua história de vida com fios e panos. Na composição de todos esses elementos, criamos na escola um lugar de acolhimento das individualidades, das subjetividades de cada um de nós, verdadeiros tesouros segredados.
Clinicians are increasingly confronted with treating the dramatically growing numbers of methamphetamine (MA) abusers. However, scant research documents the internal experience of MA abuse. This ...study uses data from ethnographic interviews to describe the development of MA abuse across users' lives. Results show drug initiation emerging from abuse during childhood and parental drug abuse. Respondents entered drug-using peer groups that paradoxically offer both protection from and vulnerability to violence and other problems. Consequences of MA abuse include economic instability and concern with only the acquisition and use of MA, instead of MA-related problems. Understandings of "problematic" drug use emerge as respondents stigmatize users who lack basic resources and hurt others for the sake of money or drugs, and parents whose use interferes with parenting. Respondents describe barriers and alternatives to treatment. Results provide insight into the experience of MA abuse. Theoretical considerations and implications are discussed.
This study examined an interaction between glutamate and norepinephrine in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) in modulating affective memory formation. Male Wistar rats with indwelling ...cannulae in the BNST were trained on a one-trial step-through inhibitory avoidance task and received pre- or post-training intra-BNST infusion of glutamate, norepinephrine or their antagonists. Results of the 1-day test indicated that post-training intra-BNST infusion of
dl-2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (APV) impaired retention in a dose- and time-dependent manner, while infusion of glutamate had an opposite effect. Co-infusion of 0.2
μg glutamate and 0.02
μg norepinephrine resulted in marked retention enhancement by summating non-apparent effects of the two drugs given at a sub-enhancing dose. The amnesic effect of 5.0
μg APV was ameliorated by 0.02
μg norepinephrine, while the memory enhancing effect of 1.0
μg glutamate was attenuated by 5.0
μg propranolol. These findings suggest that training on an inhibitory avoidance task may alter glutamate neurotransmission, which by activating NMDA receptors releases norepinephrine to modulate memory formation via β adrenoceptors in the BNST.
Eighteen temporal lobectomy patients (9 left, LTL; 9 right, RTL) were administered four verbal tasks, an Affective Implicit Task, a Neutral Implicit Task, an Affective Explicit Task, and a Neutral ...Explicit Task. For the Affective and Neutral Implicit Tasks, participants were timed while reading aloud passages with affective or neutral content, respectively, as quickly as possible, but not so quickly that they did not understand. A target verbal passage was repeated three times; this target passage was alternated with other previously unread passages, and all passages had the same number of words. The Explicit Affective and Neutral Tasks were administered at the end of testing, and consisted of multiple choice questions regarding passage content.
Verbal priming effects in terms of improved reading speed with repetition for the target but not non-target passages were found for patients with both left and right temporal lobectomies. As in the Burton, Rabin et al. Burton, L., Rabin, L., Vardy, S.B., Frohlich, J., Wyatt, G., Dimitri, D., Constante, S., Guterman, E. (2004). Gender differences in implicit and explicit memory for affective passages.
Brain and Cognition, 54(3), 218–224 normative study, there were no interactions between this priming effect and affective/neutral content. For the explicit tasks, items from the repeated passages were remembered better than the unrepeated passages, and there was a trend for information from the affective passages to be remembered better than the neutral passages, similar to the normative pattern.
The RTL group did not show the normative pattern of slower reading speed for affective compared to neutral passages that the LTL group showed. Thus, the present findings support the idea that intact right medial temporal structures are important for affective content to influence some aspects of verbal processing.
Affect and cognition have traditionally been considered mutually exclusive domains and their study has evolved into two separate research fields. In recent years, however, there is increasing ...evidence of affective modulations of cognitive processes and interest in the study of affective cognition has grown. This thesis presents analyses of data collected in four mixed-design experiments between 2009 and 2011, which were designed to investigate affective memory and its electrophysiological correlates, individual differences in said affective memory and electrophysiological correlates, the time-course of affective memory and attentional disengagement from affective stimuli respectively. The first aim of the research presented here was to further understanding of how affective content influences picture processing and memory. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a valuable tool for the investigation of modulations of cognitive processes, as their excellent temporal resolution allows for the dissociation between different processes contributing to behavioural outcomes. Several important results for the study of affective cognition are reported: The late positive potential (LPP) was shown to be modulated differentially by affective content when compared to a behavioural attentional disengagement task. While the behavioural measure of attention replicated findings from participants’ self-report of arousal, LPP enhancement did not. This novel finding demonstrates that the affective modulation of the LPP cannot be used as an electrophysiological marker of slowed attentional disengagement as is common in the literature. In the domain of recognition memory, affective modulation of performance was shown to be time-sensitive, with effects developing faster for negative than for positive picture content. Affective pictures were associated with a less conservative response bias than neutral pictures but only negative pictures elicited better discrimination performance, driven by an increased in the rate of “remembered” as compared to merely familiar pictures. This was reflected in an increase of the ERP old/new effect for negative pictures in the 500 to 800ms time window, the purported correlate of recollection. The late right-frontal old/new effect between 800 and 1500 ms post stimulus onset was shown to be attenuated by affective content, supporting the interpretation of the late right-frontal effect as a correlate of relevance detection over a retrieval success interpretation. In combination, the findings add weight to the conclusion that affective content enhances memory through selective memory sparing for affective stimuli. Novel evidence for gender differences in affective cognition was found. Comparisons between female and male participants revealed that the affective modulation of the late right-frontal effect differs between the genders, underlining the importance of assessing and understanding gender differences as part of the study of affective cognition. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene val66met single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), a small genetic change that affects the functioning of BDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuron growth, differentiation and survival, is shown here to also affect the interaction of affect and cognition. BDNF val66met genotype modulated the early “familiarity” old/new effect selectively in response to positive pictures. The present study clearly demonstrates the value of the ERP technique in the investigation of individual differences in affective and cognitive processing and the need to take such individual differences into account as part of the endeavour to fully understand the mechanisms of affective processing, cognition and affective cognition. A better understanding of the role of gender and genetic differences in the affective modulation of affective processing and memory will have important practical implications in fields where affect and cognition interact.
This study investigated the roles of NMDA and AMPA receptors in the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex in formation and retrieval of affective memory. In a one-trial step-through inhibitory ...avoidance task, groups of rats with cannulae implanted into these two regions received infusion of 2.5 micrograms APV or 0.3 micrograms CNQX 5 min before training, shortly after training or 5 min prior to the 1-day or 21-day retention test. Results showed that pre- or posttraining intra-amygdala infusion of APV or CNQX induced a persistent retention deficit with the pretraining treatment causing a greater effect. Pre- or posttraining infusion of CNQX into the medial prefrontal cortex also induced a persistent retention deficit with the posttraining treatment causing a greater effect. Pre- or posttraining infusion of APV into the medial prefrontal cortex impaired 21-day retention but not 1-day retention. Pretraining infusion of lidocaine into either structure caused a retention deficit, which was not attenuated by activating the other structure with glutamate. Pretest intra-amygdala infusion of CNQX impaired memory expression in the 1-day test, while infusion of CNQX into the medial prefrontal cortex impaired memory expression in the 21-day test. Pretest APV infusion into either structure had no effect on memory expression. These findings suggest that the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex may be contained in a circuitry responsible for formation of affective memory. The consolidation process involves the NMDA and AMPA receptors in both structures. Further, retrieval of recent affective memory engages amygdala AMPA receptors, whereas retrieval of remote affective memory engages AMPA receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex.
Eighteen epileptic patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (9 left, 9 right) were evaluated with a verbal memory task involving recall of 2 stories, I with affective content and I that was ...neutral. A trend for better performance by the group with intact left hemispheres was found for a quantitative score of number of story units recalled. For a qualitative score of number of symbolic distortions, a main effect of affective load was found, such that more distortions were made for the story with affective than neutral content. This effect remained significant when the left temporal lobe epilepsy patients were analyzed separately and was not found for the right temporal lobe epilepsy patients alone. Additional analyses for the subset of 5 patients with left and 6 patients with right temporal lobectomies involving removal of the hippocampus and amygdala were in the same direction as the analyses for all 18 participants. These findings are consistent with other reports of material-specific memory deficits, such that verbal memory deficits are associated with left temporal lobe epilepsy. The differences between performance on the affective and neutral stories for the left and right temporal lobe epilepsy patients are discussed and related to the role of the amygdala in affective processing.
Stanislavski's method is a dramatic technique that has traditionally been used only by actors. Explores the possibilities of incorporating this method into traditional modes of drama therapy and into ...therapy in general, and compares it with the more common drama games now being employed in drama therapy. (Original abstract-amended)
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