Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T00:35:31.998Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Panic disorder and memory: does panic disorder result from memory dysfunction?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Get access

Summary

It is proposed that patients with panic disorder have a defect in fear-relevant episodic memory, and their panic attacks arise from automaticity in recollecting fear-relevant emotional-autonomic cluster. The cluster as a component of fear appears to have been dissociated from cognitive structure (episodic or informative memory trace) or from ‘information structure’.

A special method was created for testing this hypothesis where 30 panic disorder patients, 12 healthy controls, and 32 patients with other psychiatric diagnoses were asked to recall and describe a fearful experience. None of the patients in the panic disorder group could recall any fearful event or episode in their past. All but one subject among healthy controls and all the subjects in the non-panic group could recall one or more fearful event or episode. Possible theoretical implications of these results are discussed in the context of some classical concepts.

Type
Short communication
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier, Paris 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agras, WSWilson, GT. Learning Theory.. In: Kaplan, HISadock, BJ eds. Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Sixth Edition, Vol 1. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins; 1995. p.301.Google Scholar
Beck, ATEmery, GGreenwald, R.L.. Anxiety disorders and phobias. New York: Basic Books; 1985.Google Scholar
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association; 1994.Google Scholar
Foa, EBKozak, MJ. Emotional Processing of Fear: Exposure to Corrective Information. Psychological Bull 1986; 99 : 2035.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gabbard, GO. Theories of Personality and Psychopathology Psychoanalysis. In: Kaplan, HISadock, BJ eds. Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Sixth Edition, Vol 1. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins; 1995. p.464Google Scholar
Gorman, JMLiebowitz, MRFyer, AJStein, J. Neuroanatomical Hypothesis for Panic Disorder. Am J Psychiatry 1989; 146 : 148161.Google ScholarPubMed
Lang, PJ. A Bio-Informational Theory of Emotional Imagery. Psychophysiology 1979; 16 : 495512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.