Emotional memory and migraine

It is very well known that emotional events are better memorized than neutral events. In the present study we evaluated the effects of emotional content on explicit memory in cephalalgic patients, suffering from migraine headache. We utilized an adaptation of two versions of the same story, with different arousing properties (neutral or emotional), which have been already employed in several studies focused on the enhancing effects of emotions on memory retention. Subjects of this study were healthy subjects and cephalalgic patients, which included untreated migraineurs and migraineurs treated with the antidepressant amitriptyline. Our findings suggested that chronic migraine is related to memory impairment. Taking into account that migraine is associated with major depression, in the present research the effect of the antidepressant amitriptyline was also evaluated. Our results showed that amitriptyline has an impairment effect on memory. In fact, the untreated migraineurs recalled the most emotional phase of the arousal story significantly better compared to migraineurs treated with amitriptyline. Then, our data suggest that amitriptyline prevents the enhancing effects of emotional content on memory processes. Moreover, in agreement with the results we reported in previous papers, the present study confirms the existence of gender differences in the processing of emotional stimuli and underscores the view that the gender influences should be considered in future studies on neural correlates of emotion, and on the relation of emotion to memory.