Using ERPs to explore the impact of affective distraction on working memory stages in schizophrenia

Łukasz Okruszek,M Jarkiewicz,M Gola,M Cella,E Łojek

doi:10.3758/s13415-018-0578-4

Abstract

Research on individuals with schizophrenia (SCZ) shows a variety of emotional and cognitive deficits. We examined the hypothesis that ineffective emotional interference control may impact working memory (WM) performance by disrupting information encoding, maintenance, or retrieval in SCZ. Twenty-eight SCZ and 28 matched healthy controls (HC) performed the visual and verbal delayed-matching-to-sample task (DMST) with trials preceded by negative and nonemotional visual distractors. Event-Related Potentials associated with affective stimuli processing (Late Positive Potential-LPP) and WM-encoding (target-P3), maintenance (Negative Slow Wave-NSW), and retrieval (probe-P3) were analyzed. Patients showed overall worse DMST accuracy than HC. Emotional distraction negatively impacted accuracy during the verbal DMST in both groups combined. Both groups also displayed similar LPP modulation during the presentation of emotional distractors. HC showed enhanced NSW after presentation of a negative distraction, whereas this did not occur in SCZ. Comparable effects of emotional distraction were found for WM-encoding and retrieval in both groups. While emotional and neutral stimuli differentially impacted WM-maintenance on the neural level in HC, we did not observe this effect in SCZ, even though both groups showed similar behavioral and neurophysiological reactions to affective stimuli. Deficits in inhibitory mechanisms in SCZ may be responsible for this effect and may have particular relevance for WM-maintenance difficulties.

Highlights

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.There is increasing convergence on the view that cognitive and emotional processes are interdependent (Storbeck & Clore, 2008)
Because each complex behavior is a reflection of the dynamic interaction between many brain networks, the contemporary view is that none of the brain regions or structures should be deemed as uniquely responsible for emotional or cognitive processes (Pessoa, 2008)
Various phases of working memory may be differentially affected by the deficient interference control mechanisms in SCZ. We explored this problem by examining the neurophysiological correlates of subsequent working memory stages under the conditions of affective distraction in healthy controls (HC) and in SCZ

Summary

Introduction

There is increasing convergence on the view that cognitive and emotional processes are interdependent (Storbeck & Clore, 2008). Because each complex behavior is a reflection of the dynamic interaction between many brain networks, the contemporary view is that none of the brain regions or structures should be deemed as uniquely responsible for emotional or cognitive processes (Pessoa, 2008). This provides an explanation of how emotions may influence cognitive processes. The impact of situational emotional arousal on episodic memory (Bflashbulb memories^) is explained by the modulatory interaction between the amygdala and the

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Conclusion