LINK BETWEEN EMOTIONAL MEMORY AND ANXIETY-STATES - A STUDY BY PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS

Numerous theoretical as well as pharmacological arguments lead to the assumption that anxiety and memory are two closely linked concepts. Ne vertheless, the study of this relationship is full of complexities bec ause neither memory nor anxiety are unitary phenomena. Indeed, the ter m memory covers a large number of concepts, and anxiety has been divid ed in two main classes, ''state'' and ''trait'' anxiety. Recently the neophobic responses exhibited by Balb/c mice confronted to the free ex ploratory paradigm have been proposed as a ''trait anxiety'' model whi le response exhibited in the light/dark choice procedure as a ''state anxiety'' one. The aim of this study was to further clarify the link b etween these two anxiety types and memory of emotional events assessed in the passive avoidance test. The relationship between the variables measured in these three tests were assessed by a principal component analysis that confirmed that the behavior recorded in the two anxiety tests does not reflect the same psychological state, and showed that e motional memory is linked to ''state'' but not ''trait'' anxiety.