Investigating the dynamic relationship between anxiety and spatial memory using autonomous ecological momentary assessment

In 30 epilepsy patients on inpatient EEG monitoring, asm-EMA found no link between momentary STAI-6 anxiety and spatial memory accuracy, while higher within-person STAI-6 predicted faster retrieval.

• Why it matters: Anxiety–memory relationships are well studied, but how anxiety dynamically tracks spatial episodic memory in real clinical environments is unclear.
• What they did: The anxiety-spatial-memory EMA protocol delivered pseudo-random momentary anxiety ratings and a validated spatial memory task every 90–150 minutes across multiple days, then related subject-level averages and variability to standard neuropsychological tests.
• The result: Temporal modeling showed gradual hospital-day change and short-term carry-over across anxiety, pain, and spatial memory, with STAI-6 and spatial memory showing stronger hospital-day trends and VAS anxiety showing the clearest session-to-session carry-over.

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