Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access published online on July 15, 2008
Schizophrenia Bulletin, doi:10.1093/schbul/sbn081
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Emotional Memory in Schizophrenia
2 Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL
1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 912 S Wood Street (M/C 913), Chicago, IL 60612, tel: 312-413-4612, fax: 312-413-7856, e-mail: eherbener{at}psych.uic.edu.
Emotional memories play an important role in our day-to-day experience, informing many of our minute-to-minute decisions (eg, where to go for dinner, what are the likely consequences of not attending a meeting), as well as our long-term goal setting. Individuals with schizophrenia appear to be impaired in memory for emotional experiences, particularly over longer delay periods, which may contribute to deficits in goal-related behavior and symptoms of amotivation and anhedonia. This article reviews factors that are known to influence emotional memory in healthy subjects, applies these factors to results from emotional memory studies with individuals with schizophrenia, and then uses extant neurobiological models of emotional memory formation to develop hypotheses about biological processes that might particularly contribute to emotional memory impairment in schizophrenia.
Keywords: anhedonia / amotivation / biological mechanisms / episodic memory / emotional memory