Characteristics of emotional memory impairment in patients with primary insomnia

Abstract

Objective To investigate the emotional memory impairment in patients with primary insomnia(PI) and explore the neurobiological mechanisms underlying primary insomnia through emotional memory tasks involving different valance of emotional pictures. Methods Thirty patients with primary insomnia(PI group) and twenty healthy controls(HC group) were given emotional memory tasks using positive, neutral and negative valence images. The emotional memory was evaluated by the recognition of emotional pictures. Results Compared with healthy controls (positive (11.60±4.00), neutral (11.05±3.73) and negative (12.60±2.06), respectively ), patients with PI ( positive (11.30±3.75), neutral (11.47±3.21) and negative (11.43±4.12), respectively) showed no significant difference in appraisal of the emotional pictures (P>0.05). Compared with healthy controls (43.40±4.88) for the emotional images memorizing task, patients with PI (39.40±6.43) exhibited evident deficit of all emotional images (P 0.05). Conclusion The results suggest that emotional memory is impaired in patients with PI. Moreover, the emotional memory for positive and neutral vanlence pictures is impaired but the emotional memory for negative is relatively spared in patients with primary insomnia. The results also indicate that impaired emotional memory with different valences may relate with distinct neuromechanisms. Key words: Primary insomnia; Emotions; Memory; Neuropsychological tests