People who are prone to anxiety and depression remember many negative things without being clearly aware of it.This time, a joint research group * such as Toyama University and Kitasato University has clarified for the first time in the world the neurobiological mechanism of negatively biased recall under consciousness.
People who suffer from anxiety disorders and depression, and those who have a tendency to become anxious and depressed even if they have not developed the disease, disregard positive or neutral information and have a lot of negative information. It is said that it tends to be easy to remember and remember.It was clinically and academically known that people who are prone to anxiety and depression have negatively biased memory, but the detailed mechanism was unknown.
The research group now examined 100 adults who did not suffer from depression or anxiety disorders.As a result, both anxiety and depressive personality tendencies were associated with biased amnestics, which tended to recall negative stimuli without explicit awareness.People with a personality tendency who tended to be particularly anxious took in more negative information from the information they had contacted immediately before, and remembered more under consciousness.
In addition, such negatively biased memory is due to the functional connection between the lateral basal ganglia of the amygdala and the lower anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, and the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine (MHPG, its major metabolites). It was found to be explained by the synergistic effect with.
This finding contributes to the elucidation of the onset mechanism of stress-related psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders and depression, and psychological intervention methods targeting such memory bias will be effective for anxiety disorders and depression in the future. It is expected to be one of the treatment / prevention methods.
* In addition, the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Kurume University, Wayne State University in the United States, and Kyoto University participated.