Emotional Memory in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic PRISMA Review of Controlled Studies

Abstract

Background: Emotional memory is an adaptive process that improves the memorization of emotional events or stimuli. In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), emotional memory may be altered, which in turn may affect symptoms. Having a clearer view of the processes of interaction between memory and emotional stimuli in PTSD may improve our knowledge of this disorder, and could create new therapeutic management tools. Thus, we performed a systematic review of the evidence of specific emotional memory in PTSD patients.Method: Following PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review of MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and ScienceDirect was undertaken to identify controlled studies on emotional memory that used cognitive tasks on PTSD patients. The initial research was conducted from June 2017 to July 2017, and search terms included: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; PTSD; emotional memory; emotion; emotional; memory; and episodic memory.Results: Eighteen studies reporting on 387 PTSD patients met the eligibility criteria. Among the studies selected, 11 observed specific memory processing in PTSD patients, such as a greater memorization of negative information, or a trend to false recognition of negative information. In addition, attentional and inhibition processing seem to play an important role in emotional memory in PTSD sufferers. Furthermore, other studies that did not find behavioral differences between PTSD and control groups nevertheless showed differences in both specific cerebral activities and neurohormone levels during emotional memory tasks.Conclusion: This review has several limitations, including a limited number of controlled studies, small sample sizes, different tasks and methods. Nevertheless, the results of this systematic review provide interesting information on emotional memory for clinicians and researchers, as they seem to highlight facilitated memory processing for negative information in PTSD patients. This topic needs further controlled studies with sensitive behavioral tasks. Also, future studies may evaluate emotional memory after symptom amelioration.

Mother–child communication about possible cancer recurrence during childhood cancer survivorship

“…These findings are consistent with prior research showing that maternal PTSS affects mother–child communication months after an initial diagnosis 21,22 and extends these findings three to five years later into survivorship. This adds to the growing body of research suggesting that mothers who have experienced post‐traumatic stress are at heightened risk for more avoidant/withdrawn patterns of communication with children, 26 and is consistent with research indicating that early trauma symptoms impact how an event is remembered 23 . Interestingly, child age significantly moderated the relation between maternal PTSS and length of maternal discussion about recurrence; maternal PTSS significantly predicted shorter discussions for mothers of children 15 years and younger, but there was a nonsignificant association between PTSS and length of cancer recurrence discussion (number of utterances) for mothers of older children/adolescents.…”

“…Specifically, parental distress (anxiety, depression, post‐traumatic stress) predicts higher levels of negative communication (e.g., withdrawn or intrusive communication styles) and lower levels of positive communication (e.g., warmth, validation), which is subsequently linked to child distress 21,22 . PTSS specific to child cancer diagnosis is particularly important to consider, as there is research suggesting early trauma symptoms impact how a stressor is subsequently remembered 23 . It is possible that parental distress may also affect parent‐child communication about the possibility of cancer recurrence during survivorship, such that parents who experience more intense PTSS during the early stage of their child's cancer treatment may have a difficult time initiating a conversation about recurrence with their child and discussing it at length.…”

Neurocognitive Predictors of Treatment Outcomes in Cognitive Processing Therapy for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Study Protocol

“…Our primary hypothesis for this aim is that treatment recall at the treatment midpoint will mediate the association between verbal immediate memory at baseline and treatment outcomes. Finally, in an exploratory fashion, we also aim to examine whether alternative models of dysfunctional memory in PTSD, including impairment in autobiographical memory ( Barry et al, 2018 ), emotional memory consolidation ( Durand et al, 2019 ), or prospective memory ( Scott et al, 2016 ), might better explain the relationship between memory deficits and psychotherapy outcomes. For this aim, our primary hypothesis is that effect size comparisons will reveal that verbal learning functioning at baseline exhibits larger effects than prospective memory, emotional memory consolidation, or autobiographical memory in predicting psychotherapy treatment outcomes.…”

Polygenic regulation of PTSD severity and outcomes among World Trade Center responders

“…Simultaneously, we may significantly over-estimate the amount of variance explained by these traumas and exposures to traumatic stress. Most importantly, participant recall of traumas and stressors is biased by current mood and PTSD symptomatology 39,40 , implying that individuals within our study with current PTSD may rank their stressors higher than those without, confounding our analysis. The effect may be especially pronounced among scales and scoring systems that require rankings or subjective recall many years later (for example, the CTQ or ‘stressful life events since 9/11’) than the data on WTC-related exposures collected within a few years post-9/11/2001, perhaps also accounting for the difference in variance explained by these factors 41 .…”