Investigating the Dynamic Relationship Between Anxiety and Spatial Memory Using Autonomous Ecological Momentary...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Clinical Research

Background:

• Anxiety's impact on memory is well-researched, but its real-time effects on spatial episodic memory in clinical settings are less understood.
• Epilepsy patients often experience anxiety, which may affect cognitive functions like spatial memory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol for measuring dynamic anxiety-spatial memory associations.
• To investigate how momentary anxiety levels influence spatial memory performance and retrieval speed in epilepsy patients.

Main Methods:

• Developed and deployed an anxiety-spatial-memory EMA (asm-EMA) protocol in 30 epilepsy patients during inpatient EEG monitoring.
• Administered pseudo-randomized momentary anxiety ratings and spatial memory tasks every 90-150 minutes over multiple days.
• Correlated subject-level asm-EMA data with standard neuropsychological assessments.

Main Results:

• Subject-level asm-EMA metrics showed significant correlations with standard neuropsychological assessments, confirming clinical validity.
• Elevated anxiety (STAI-6) was linked to faster retrieval times but did not impair spatial memory accuracy.
• Anxiety exhibited short-term carryover effects between consecutive sessions, with minimal persistence beyond the next session.

Conclusions:

• The asm-EMA protocol is a feasible and autonomous method for capturing real-time anxiety-memory dynamics in naturalistic clinical environments.
• Findings suggest anxiety may alter response strategies (speed) rather than impairing spatial memory accuracy in this population.
• This approach offers a valuable framework for future research on anxiety-memory interactions in neurological conditions.