Electroconvulsive Therapy and Autobiographical Memory: Current landscape and possible ways forward

作者：Alexander Tobias Ysbæk-Nielsen, Ida Astrid Lindegaard · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.31237/osf.io/snm7d_v1 · 研究领域：Electroconvulsive Therapy Studies、Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications、Identity, Memory, and Therapy

Despite electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) being the most effective treatment for severedepressive episodes in affective illnesses, it is surrounded by substantial stigma, leavingpatients concerned with how it may affect their memory. While most cognitive side-effects are only transient, ECT’s impact on autobiographical memory (AM) in the longterm is currently uncertain. This is likely amplified by methodological challenges, as wellas the finding that the depressive episodes targeted by ECT seem to have a discernibleimpact on AM of their own. This bachelor’s thesis aims to contribute to thecomprehension of ECT’s effect on AM by investigating the utility of a measurepreviously unused for this purpose, the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), in twonovel empirical studies: The first was conducted alongside this thesis and is an on-goinglongitudinal clinical study, attempting to disentangle the influence of ECT from that ofdepressive episodes themselves by employing AMT. The second, a previous study withhitherto unused functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, was made availablefor an analysis probing the suitability of the AMT for neural investigations.In the clinical study, tentative analyses comparing one patient with 21 healthycontrols revealed the existence of AM-impairment prior to ECT, with an additionaldecline following treatment. This finding was in line with other studies and supports theexistence of AM-deficits related to both depressive episodes and ECT. Neverth...