Emotional Memory Task Research Articles

Motivation and Memory

Abstract. The present study investigated the compensatory impact of motivation to learn on memory performance with age. Twenty-one university undergraduate young adults (M = 22.7, SD = 2.6) and 19 community-dwelling older adults (M = 72.7, SD = 6.6) performed an emotional story memory task with an immediate and delayed recall 7 days later. The emotional content and the age relevance of the stories were manipulated to increase the motivation of older adults to learn. As postulated, results showed no age differences on the recall of positive stories, whereas the recall of negative and neutral stories was lower for older than young adults. In conclusion, motivational aspects may lead to the equivalent memory performance of young and older adults.

Anxiety promotes memory for mood-congruent faces but does not alter loss aversion.

Pathological anxiety is associated with disrupted cognitive processing, including working memory and decision-making. In healthy individuals, experimentally-induced state anxiety or high trait anxiety often results in the deployment of adaptive harm-avoidant behaviours. However, how these processes affect cognition is largely unknown. To investigate this question, we implemented a translational within-subjects anxiety induction, threat of shock, in healthy participants reporting a wide range of trait anxiety scores. Participants completed a gambling task, embedded within an emotional working memory task, with some blocks under unpredictable threat and others safe from shock. Relative to the safe condition, threat of shock improved recall of threat-congruent (fearful) face location, especially in highly trait anxious participants. This suggests that threat boosts working memory for mood-congruent stimuli in vulnerable individuals, mirroring memory biases in clinical anxiety. By contrast, Bayesian analysis indicated that gambling decisions were better explained by models that did not include threat or treat anxiety, suggesting that: (i) higher-level executive functions are robust to these anxiety manipulations; and (ii) decreased risk-taking may be specific to pathological anxiety. These findings provide insight into the complex interactions between trait anxiety, acute state anxiety and cognition, and may help understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptive anxiety.

Sleep benefits emotional and neutral associative memories equally

Emotions modulate memory. It has been suggested that sleep contributes to improved memory of emotional events by preferentially consolidating emotional memories, presumably because of a selective off-line reactivation of information relevant to future behavior. We aimed to validate sleep-dependent memory consolidation in a new associative emotional memory paradigm suitable for inducing memory reactivations during sleep. We hypothesized that sleep preferentially might benefit the consolidation of emotional associations independently of their negative vs positive emotional valence. Seventy-two healthy young participants performed an associative emotional memory task in either the evening or the morning. During the task, they were asked to associate neutrally spoken words to neutral, negative or positive pictures. Cued recall was tested after a 12-h retention interval filled with either night-time sleep or daytime wakefulness. Generally, emotional associations were better remembered than neutral ones. However, we were not able to replicate a selective benefit of sleep on emotional memory. Sleep robustly improved the cued recall performance of all picture types compared with wakefulness, without any modulating influence of emotional arousal or valence. We conclude that the consolidation of explicitly learned associations benefits from sleep, independent of emotional arousal or valence. Selective emotional memory consolidation during sleep may be restricted to non-associative item memory or incidentally learned emotional associations.

Prestimulus default mode activity influences depth of processing and recognition in an emotional memory task.

Low self-referential thoughts are associated with better concentration, which leads to deeper encoding and increases learning and subsequent retrieval. There is evidence that being engaged in externally rather than internally focused tasks is related to low neural activity in the default mode network (DMN) promoting open mind and the deep elaboration of new information. Thus, reduced DMN activity should lead to enhanced concentration, comprehensive stimulus evaluation including emotional categorization, deeper stimulus processing, and better long-term retention over one whole week. In this fMRI study, we investigated brain activation preceding and during incidental encoding of emotional pictures and on subsequent recognition performance. During fMRI, 24 subjects were exposed to 80 pictures of different emotional valence and subsequently asked to complete an online recognition task one week later. Results indicate that neural activity within the medial temporal lobes during encoding predicts subsequent memory performance. Moreover, a low activity of the default mode network preceding incidental encoding leads to slightly better recognition performance independent of the emotional perception of a picture. The findings indicate that the suppression of internally-oriented thoughts leads to a more comprehensive and thorough evaluation of a stimulus and its emotional valence. Reduced activation of the DMN prior to stimulus onset is associated with deeper encoding and enhanced consolidation and retrieval performance even one week later. Even small prestimulus lapses of attention influence consolidation and subsequent recognition performance.

The Facial Expressive Action Stimulus Test. A test battery for the assessment of face memory, face and object perception, configuration processing, and facial expression recognition.

There are many ways to assess face perception skills. In this study, we describe a novel task battery FEAST (Facial Expressive Action Stimulus Test) developed to test recognition of identity and expressions of human faces as well as stimulus control categories. The FEAST consists of a neutral and emotional face memory task, a face and shoe identity matching task, a face and house part-to-whole matching task, and a human and animal facial expression matching task. The identity and part-to-whole matching tasks contain both upright and inverted conditions. The results provide reference data of a healthy sample of controls in two age groups for future users of the FEAST.

Characteristics of emotional memory impairment in patients with primary insomnia

Objective To investigate the emotional memory impairment in patients with primary insomnia(PI) and explore the neurobiological mechanisms underlying primary insomnia through emotional memory tasks involving different valance of emotional pictures. Methods Thirty patients with primary insomnia(PI group) and twenty healthy controls(HC group) were given emotional memory tasks using positive, neutral and negative valence images. The emotional memory was evaluated by the recognition of emotional pictures. Results Compared with healthy controls (positive (11.60±4.00), neutral (11.05±3.73) and negative (12.60±2.06), respectively ), patients with PI ( positive (11.30±3.75), neutral (11.47±3.21) and negative (11.43±4.12), respectively) showed no significant difference in appraisal of the emotional pictures (P>0.05). Compared with healthy controls (43.40±4.88) for the emotional images memorizing task, patients with PI (39.40±6.43) exhibited evident deficit of all emotional images (P 0.05). Conclusion The results suggest that emotional memory is impaired in patients with PI. Moreover, the emotional memory for positive and neutral vanlence pictures is impaired but the emotional memory for negative is relatively spared in patients with primary insomnia. The results also indicate that impaired emotional memory with different valences may relate with distinct neuromechanisms. Key words: Primary insomnia; Emotions; Memory; Neuropsychological tests

“Turning down the heat”: Is poor performance of children with ADHD on tasks tapping “hot” emotional regulation caused by deficits in “cool” executive functions?

Emotional dysregulation in daily life is very common in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is however not clear whether this reflects a specific deficit or that it may be the result of generic executive function (EF) deficits. The current study addresses this question by means of an emotional working memory (WM) task with 2 memory load conditions and four possible backgrounds (blank screen, neutral, positive or negative picture), which was administered to 38 typically developing children and 29 children with ADHD. Children responded slower on trials when negative pictures were presented at the background versus when neutral pictures were presented, indicating an emotional interference effect; however crucially, groups did not differ in this respect. Reaction times were also slower on trials with a neutral picture as background versus trials without a picture, with children with ADHD showing an enhanced interference effect. There was a main effect of WM load on performance, but it did not interact with interference or group effects. To summarize, the findings indicate a generic interference control deficit in the children with ADHD in the current sample, while they could not provide support for an emotional interference deficit.

Depressed patients in remission show an interaction between variance in the mineralocorticoid receptor NR3C2 gene and childhood trauma on negative memory bias.

Genetic, environmental, and cognitive factors play a role in the development and recurrence of depression. More specifically, cognitive biases have been associated with depression risk genes and life events. Recently, the mineralocorticoid receptor NR3C2 gene, and in particular the rs5534 polymorphism, has been associated with negative memory bias, at least in healthy individuals who experienced severe life adversity. The current study examined the interaction between the rs5534 genotype and different types of adverse life events in a sample of depressed patients in remission. A total of 298 depressed patients in remission performed an incidental emotional memory task (negative and positive words). Life adversity, childhood trauma, and recent adversity were measured using a self-report questionnaire. NR3C2 rs5534 by life adversity, as well as childhood trauma and recent adversity interactions were analyzed for negative and positive memory bias using analyses of covariance. The significant interaction between rs5534 and childhood trauma on negative memory bias (P=0.046) indicated that risk 'A' allele carriers with childhood trauma tended to show more negative memory bias compared to individuals homozygous for the G allele who had experienced childhood trauma and A allele carriers without childhood trauma. No interaction effects with life adversity or recent adversity were found. Also, no main effect of rs5534 on memory bias was found, although we had insufficient power for this analysis. An association of the NR3C2 gene and childhood trauma with negative memory bias was found in depressed patients in remission, which extends previous findings in a healthy population.

Measures of skin conductance and heart rate in alcoholic men and women during memory performance.

We examined abnormalities in physiological responses to emotional stimuli associated with long-term chronic alcoholism. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and heart rate (HR) responses were measured in 32 abstinent alcoholic (ALC) and 30 healthy nonalcoholic (NC) men and women undergoing an emotional memory task in an MRI scanner. The task required participants to remember the identity of two emotionally-valenced faces presented at the onset of each trial during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. After viewing the faces, participants saw a distractor image (an alcoholic beverage, nonalcoholic beverage, or scrambled image) followed by a single probe face. The task was to decide whether the probe face matched one of the two encoded faces. Skin conductance measurements (before and after the encoded faces, distractor, and probe) were obtained from electrodes on the index and middle fingers on the left hand. HR measurements (beats per minute before and after the encoded faces, distractor, and probe) were obtained by a pulse oximeter placed on the little finger on the left hand. We expected that, relative to NC participants, the ALC participants would show reduced SCR and HR responses to the face stimuli, and that we would identify greater reactivity to the alcoholic beverage stimuli than to the distractor stimuli unrelated to alcohol. While the beverage type did not differentiate the groups, the ALC group did have reduced skin conductance and HR responses to elements of the task, as compared to the NC group.

Emotional memory processing is influenced by sleep quality

ObjectiveThe recall of emotional memory is enhanced after sleep and is hindered by sleep deprivation. We used an emotional memory task to assess whether poor sleep quality, as well as sleep deprivation, may influence the accuracy of memory recognition, but also the affective tone associated with the memory. MethodsSeventy-five subjects, divided into poor sleeper (PS), good sleeper (GS), and sleep deprivation (SD) groups, completed two recall (R) sessions: R1, 1 h after the encoding phase; and R2, after one night of sleep for PS and GS groups and after one night of sleep deprivation for the SD group. During the encoding phase, the participants rated valence and arousal of 90 pictures. During R1 and R2, the participants first made a yes/no memory judgment of the 45 target pictures intermingled with 30 non-target pictures, then rated valence and arousal of each picture. ResultsRecognition accuracy was higher for the PS and GS groups compared to the SD group for all pictures. Emotional valence of the remembered pictures was more negative after sleep deprivation and poor quality sleep, while it was preserved after a good sleep. ConclusionsThese results provide the first evidence that poor sleep quality negatively affects emotional valence of memories, within the context of preserved emotional memory consolidation. It is suggested that low sleep quality and lack of sleep may impose a more negative affective tone to memories. The reported effects are not to be ascribed to depressive mood, but to a specific influence of poor sleep quality.

Memory bias training by means of the emotional short-term memory task

Abstract According to major cognitive theories of emotional disorders cognitive biases are partly responsible for their onset and maintenance. The direct test of this assumption is possible only if experimental method capable of altering a given form of cognitive bias is available. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of a novel implicit memory bias training procedure based on the emotional version of the classical Sternberg’s short-term memory task with negative, neutral and positive words. 108 participants, who completed the PANAS and the CES-D questionnaires, were randomly assigned to the control group (n = 33), the No-Negative group (n = 36), in which the target words in the Sternberg’s task were either positive or neutral but never negative or the Negative-New group (n = 39) in which the negative target words in the modified Sternberg’s task were always new. This training was followed by the recollection stage. Only one of the training protocols resulted in significant effects at the recall stage - individuals in the No-Negative group recalled more positive words and fewer negative words than those in the control group. These results show that it may be possible to experimentally induce memory bias characteristic of non-depressed individuals.

Emotion Regulation of Neuroticism: Emotional Information Processing Related to Psychosomatic State Evaluated by Electroencephalography and Exact Low-Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography

Emotion regulation is the process that adjusts the type or amount of emotion when we experience an emotional situation. The aim of this study was to reveal quantitative changes in brain activity during emotional information processing related to psychosomatic states and to determine electrophysiological features of neuroticism. Twenty-two healthy subjects (mean age 25 years, 14 males and 8 females) were registered. Electroencephalography (EEG) was measured during an emotional audiovisual memory task under three conditions (neutral, pleasant and unpleasant sessions). We divided the subjects into two groups using the Cornell Medical Index (CMI): (CMI-I: control group, n = 10: CMI-II, III or IV: neuroticism group, n = 12). We analyzed the digital EEG data using exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (eLORETA) current source density (CSD) and functional connectivity analysis in several frequency bands (δ, θ, α, β, γ and whole band). In all subjects, bilateral frontal α CSD in the unpleasant session increased compared to the pleasant session, especially in the control group (p < 0.05). CSD of the neuroticism group was significantly higher than that of the control group in the full band at the amygdala and inferior temporal gyrus, and in the α band at the right temporal lobe (p < 0.05). Additionally, we found an increase in functional connectivity between the left insular cortex and right superior temporal gyrus in all subjects during the unpleasant session compared to the pleasant session (p < 0.05). In this study, using EEG analysis, we could find a novel cortical network related to brain mechanisms underlying emotion regulation. Overall findings indicate that it is possible to characterize neuroticism electrophysiologically, which may serve as a neurophysiological marker of this personality trait.

DISC1 gene and affective psychopathology: A combined structural and functional MRI study

The gene Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) has been indicated as a determinant of psychopathology, including affective disorders, and shown to influence prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus functioning, regions of major interest for affective disorders. We aimed to investigate whether DISC1 differentially modulates brain function during executive and memory processing, and morphology in regions relevant for depression and anxiety disorders (affective disorders). 128 participants, with (n = 103) and without (controls; n = 25) affective disorders underwent genotyping for Ser704Cys (with Cys-allele considered as risk-allele) and structural and functional (f) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) during visuospatial planning and emotional episodic memory tasks. For both voxel-based morphometry and fMRI analyses, we investigated the effect of genotype in controls and explored genotypeXdiagnosis interactions. Results are reported at p < 0.05 FWE small volume corrected. In controls, Cys-carriers showed smaller bilateral (para)hippocampal volumes compared with Ser-homozygotes, and lower activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral PFC during visuospatial planning. In anxiety patients, Cys-carriers showed larger (para)hippocampal volumes and more ACC activation during visuospatial planning. In depressive patients, no effect of genotype was observed and overall, no effect of genotype on episodic memory processing was detected. We demonstrated that Ser704Cys-genotype influences (para)hippocampal structure and functioning the dorsal PFC during executive planning, most prominently in unaffected controls. Results suggest that presence of psychopathology moderates Ser704Cys effects.

No evidence for the association between a polymorphism in the PCLO depression candidate gene with memory bias in remitted depressed patients and healthy individuals.

The PCLO rs2522833 candidate polymorphism for depression has been associated to monoaminergic neurotransmission. In healthy and currently depressed individuals, the polymorphism has been found to affect activation of brain areas during memory processing, but no direct association of PCLO with memory bias was found. We hypothesized that the absence of this association might have been obscured by current depressive symptoms or genetically driven individual differences in reactivity to stressful events. Experiencing stressful childhood events fosters dysfunctional assumptions that are related to cognitive biases, and may modulate the predisposition for depression via epigenetic effects. The association between PCLO and memory bias, as well as interaction between PCLO and childhood events was studied in patients remitted from depression (N = 299), as well as a sample of healthy individuals (N = 157). The participants performed an emotional verbal memory task after a sad mood induction. Childhood trauma and adversity were measured with a questionnaire. The Genotype main effect, and Genotype by Childhood Events interaction were analyzed for memory bias in both samples. PCLO risk allele carrying remitted depressed patients did not show more negatively biased memory than non-risk allele carriers, not even patients with stressful childhood events. A similar pattern of results was found in healthy individuals. Memory bias may not be strongly associated with the PCLO rs2522833 polymorphism. We did not find any support for the PCLO-childhood events interaction, but the power of our study was insufficient to exclude this possibility.

Dissociable patterns in the control of emotional interference in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and in adults with alcohol dependence.

ObjectivesTo effectively manage current task demands, attention must be focused on task-relevant information while task-irrelevant information is rejected. However, in everyday life, people must cope with emotions, which may interfere with actual task demands and may challenge functional attention allocation. Control of interfering emotions has been associated with the proper functioning of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). As DLPFC dysfunction is evident in subjects with ADHD and in subjects with alcohol dependence, the current study sought to examine the bottom-up effect of emotional distraction on task performance in both disorders.MethodsMale adults with ADHD (n = 22), male adults with alcohol dependence (n = 16), and healthy controls (n = 30) performed an emotional working memory task (n-back task). In the background of the task, we presented neutral and negative stimuli that varied in emotional saliency.ResultsIn both clinical groups, a working memory deficit was evident. Moreover, both clinical groups displayed deficient emotional interference control. The n-back performance of the controls was not affected by the emotional distractors, whereas that of subjects with ADHD deteriorated in the presence of low salient distractors, and that of alcoholics did not deteriorate until high salient distractors were presented. Subsequent to task performance, subjects with ADHD accurately recognized more distractors than did alcoholics and controls. In alcoholics, picture recognition accuracy was negatively associated with n-back performance, suggesting a functional association between the ability to suppress emotional distractors and successful task performance. In subjects with ADHD, performance accuracy was negatively associated with ADHD inattentive symptoms, suggesting that inattention contributes to the performance deficit.ConclusionsSubjects with ADHD and alcoholics both display an emotional interference control deficit, which is especially pronounced in subjects with ADHD. Beyond dysfunctional attention allocation processes, a more general attention deficit seems to contribute to the more pronounced performance deficit pattern in ADHD.

Dysfunction of emotional brain systems in individuals at high risk of mood disorder with depression and predictive features prior to illness.

Abnormalities of emotion-related brain circuitry, including cortico-thalamic-limbic regions underpin core symptoms of bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). It is unclear whether these abnormalities relate to symptoms of the disorder, are present in unaffected relatives, or whether they can predict future illness. The Bipolar Family Study (BFS) is a prospective longitudinal study that has examined individuals at familial risk of mood disorder and healthy controls on three occasions, 2 years apart. The current study concerns imaging data from the second assessment; 51 controls and 81 high-risk (HR) individuals performing an emotional memory task. The latter group was divided into 61 HR individuals who were well, and 20 who met diagnostic criteria for MDD. At the time of the third assessment a further 11 HR individuals (from the Well group) had developed MDD. The current analyses focused on (i) differences between groups based on diagnostic status at the time of the scan, and (ii) predictors of future illness, comparing the 11 HR individuals who became unwell after the second scanning assessment to those who remained well. All groups demonstrated typical emotional modulation of memory and associated brain activations. For analysis (i) the HR MDD group demonstrated increased thalamic activation v. HR Well. (ii) HR Well individuals who subsequently became ill showed increased activation of thalamus, insula and anterior cingulate compared to those who remained well. These findings suggest evidence for specific changes related to the presence of illness and evidence that changes in brain function in cortico-thalamic-limbic regions precede clinical illness.

Decreased susceptibility to false memories from misinformation in hormonal contraception users

Sex hormones are increasingly implicated in memory formation. Recent literature has documented a relationship between hormones and emotional memory and sex differences, which are likely related to hormones, have long been demonstrated in a variety of mnemonic domains, including false memories. Hormonal contraception (HC), which alters sex hormones, has been associated with a bias towards gist memory and away from detailed memory in women who use it during an emotional memory task. Here, we investigated whether HC was associated with changes in susceptibility to false memories, which may be related to the formation of gist memories. We tested false memory susceptibility using two well-validated false memory paradigms: the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) task, and a story-based misinformation task. We found that hormonal contraceptive users were less susceptible to false memories compared to non-users in the misinformation task, and no differences were seen between groups on the DRM task. We hypothesise that the differences in false memories from the misinformation task may be related to hormonal contraceptive users' memory bias away from details, towards gist memory.

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Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) metabolizes catecholamines in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). A common polymorphism in the COMT gene (COMT val158met) has pleiotropic effects on cognitive and emotional processing. The met allele has been associated with enhanced cognitive processing but impaired emotional processing relative to the val allele. We genotyped healthy, white men in relation to the COMT val158met polymorphism. They were given a single 4 mg dose of the selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor (NRI) reboxetine or placebo in a randomized, double-blind between-subjects model and then completed an emotional memory task 2 hours later. We included 75 men in the study; 41 received reboxetine and 34 received placebo. In the placebo group, met/met carriers did not demonstrate the usual memory advantage for emotional stimuli that was observed in val carriers. Reboxetine restored this emotional enhancement of memory in met/met carriers, but had no significant effect in val carriers. We studied only men, thus limiting the generalizability of our findings. We also relied on self-reported responses to screening questions to establish healthy volunteer status, and in spite of the double-blind design, participants were significantly better than chance at identifying their intervention allocation. Emotional memory is impaired in healthy met homozygotes and selectively improved in this group by reboxetine. This has potential translational implications for the use of reboxetine, which is currently licensed as an antidepressant in several countries, and edivoxetine, a new selective NRI currently in development.

On the validity of the autobiographical emotional memory task for emotion induction.

The Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT), which involves recalling and writing about intense emotional experiences, is a widely used method to experimentally induce emotions. The validity of this method depends upon the extent to which it can induce specific desired emotions (intended emotions), while not inducing any other (incidental) emotions at different levels across one (or more) conditions. A review of recent studies that used this method indicated that most studies exclusively monitor post-writing ratings of the intended emotions, without assessing the possibility that the method may have differentially induced other incidental emotions as well. We investigated the extent of this issue by collecting both pre- and post-writing ratings of incidental emotions in addition to the intended emotions. Using methods largely adapted from previous studies, participants were assigned to write about a profound experience of anger or fear (Experiment 1) or happiness or sadness (Experiment 2). In line with previous research, results indicated that intended emotions (anger and fear) were successfully induced in the respective conditions in Experiment 1. However, disgust and sadness were also induced while writing about an angry experience compared to a fearful experience. Similarly, although happiness and sadness were induced in the appropriate conditions, Experiment 2 indicated that writing about a sad experience also induced disgust, fear, and anger, compared to writing about a happy experience. Possible resolutions to avoid the limitations of the AEMT to induce specific discrete emotions are discussed.

Cognitive-emotional training as an intervention for major depressive disorder.

There is an urgent need for more effective treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD). As understanding of the cognitive and affective neuroscience underlying psychiatric disorders expands, so do opportunities to develop interventions that capitalize on the capacity for brain plasticity. Cognitive training is one such strategy. In this article, we report a proof-of-concept study of a novel cognitive-emotional training exercise designed to enhance cognitive control for emotional information processing and targeting components of the neural networks that have been implicated in MDD. Twenty-one participants with MDD in a current episode were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment conditions: 11 participating in a cognitive-emotional training paradigm (emotional faces memory task (EFMT)) involving eight sessions over 4 weeks, and 10 participating in an active control condition (control training, CT). Assessments of MDD symptoms, negative affective bias in cognitive processing, and neurocognition (attention and working memory) were administered at baseline and after 4 weeks. Participants in the EFMT group exhibited a greater reduction in MDD symptoms compared to the CT group, and 6 of the 11 EFMT participants achieved clinical response (≥ 50% reduction in symptoms). EFMT participants also exhibited changes in negative affective bias in the hypothesized direction whereas the CT participants did not. Both groups exhibited similar, small improvements in attention and working memory. Cognitive-emotional training may represent a feasible and effective intervention strategy for MDD. This proof-of-concept study highlights the need for future studies to fully understand the effectiveness, and mechanisms of effect, of these training strategies.