title: Memory for emotional material in temporal lobe epilepsy.
abstract: Several studies suggest that highly emotional information could facilitate long-term memory encoding and consolidation processes via an amygdala-hippocampal network. Our aim was to assess emotional perception and episodic memory for emotionally arousing material in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) who are candidates for surgical treatment. We did this by using an audiovisual paradigm. Forty-six patients with medically resistant TLE (26 with left TLE and 20 with right TLE) and 19 healthy controls were assessed with a standard narrative test of emotional memory. The experimental task consisted of sequential picture slides with an accompanying narrative depicting a story that has an emotional central section. Subjects were asked to rate their emotional arousal reaction to each stimulus after the story was shown, while emotional memory (EM) was assessed a week later with a multiple choice questionnaire and a visual recognition task. Our results showed that ratings for emotional stimuli for the patients with TLE were significantly higher than for neutral stimuli (p=0.000). It was also observed that patients with TLE recalled significantly less information from each slide compared with controls, with a trend to lower scores on the questionnaire task for the group with LTLE, as well as poorer performance on the visual recognition task for the group with RLTE. Emotional memory was preserved in patients with RTLE despite having generally poorer memory performance compared with controls, while it was found to be impaired in patients with LTLE.
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina. Electronic address: claudia.muneramartinez@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Claudia P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Múnera
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina.
authors.forename: Carolina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lomlomdjian
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina.
authors.forename: Verónica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Terpiluk
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Medel
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina; National Neuroscience and Neurosurgery Center, El Cruce Hospital, Av. Calchaqui, 5401, C1888 Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Solís
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center, Neurology Division, Ramos Mejia Hospital, Gral Urquiza 609, C1221ADC CABA, Argentina; Center for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences: Epilepsy, Cognition and Behavior, Cell Biology and Neuroscience Institute (IBCN), School of Medicine, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, 2nd Floor, C1121ABG CABA, Argentina; National Neuroscience and Neurosurgery Center, El Cruce Hospital, Av. Calchaqui, 5401, C1888 Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kochen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D000069279:Drug Resistant Epilepsy / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotional memory; Temporal lobe epilepsy