title: Neural correlates of emotional working memory in patients with mild cognitive impairment.
abstract: Emotional stimuli can have beneficial effects on memory in healthy aged subjects and partly on patients with dementia. So far, no experimental study has explored the effects of memory for emotional stimuli in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a concept that describes a transitional state between normal aging and dementia. The present fMRI study explored working memory for emotional stimuli in 16 patients with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and 16 healthy aged participants. Subjects performed an n-back task (2-back) with neutral, positive, and negative emotional pictures. The analysis focused on target processing. Results showed that groups did not differ in working memory performance. In healthy aged participants emotional targets had no significant impact on working memory. In patients with aMCI a negativity bias was observed, indicating that negative targets were better remembered compared to neutral and positive targets. Regarding fMRI results, both groups showed an increase in functional activity in prefrontal and lateral parietal brain regions associated with target processing. As a key result, we observed significant group by emotion interaction effects in the precuneus. Healthy aged participants showed a signal decrease in the left precuneus for positive compared to neutral targets. The precuneus deactivation in healthy aged participants may indicate a disengagement of self-referential processes towards task-related processes. Patients with aMCI revealed a signal increase in the right precuneus for negative compared to neutral targets. This increase in precuneus activity, combined with a behavioural facilitation effect, may indicate a mechanism to compensate disease related processes in aMCI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstrasse 84, D-93053 Regensburg, Germany. katrin.doehnel@medbo.de
authors.forename: Katrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Döhnel
authors.forename: Monika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ibach
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rothmayr
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Meinhardt
authors.forename: Göran
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hajak
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen