Memory For Emotional Material Research Articles

Memory for emotional material in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Several studies suggest that highly emotional information could facilitate long-term memory encoding and consolidation processes via an amygdala-hippocampal network. Our aim was to assess emotional perception and episodic memory for emotionally arousing material in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) who are candidates for surgical treatment. We did this by using an audiovisual paradigm. Forty-six patients with medically resistant TLE (26 with left TLE and 20 with right TLE) and 19 healthy controls were assessed with a standard narrative test of emotional memory. The experimental task consisted of sequential picture slides with an accompanying narrative depicting a story that has an emotional central section. Subjects were asked to rate their emotional arousal reaction to each stimulus after the story was shown, while emotional memory (EM) was assessed a week later with a multiple choice questionnaire and a visual recognition task. Our results showed that ratings for emotional stimuli for the patients with TLE were significantly higher than for neutral stimuli (p=0.000). It was also observed that patients with TLE recalled significantly less information from each slide compared with controls, with a trend to lower scores on the questionnaire task for the group with LTLE, as well as poorer performance on the visual recognition task for the group with RLTE. Emotional memory was preserved in patients with RTLE despite having generally poorer memory performance compared with controls, while it was found to be impaired in patients with LTLE.

Effects of amphetamine on retrieval of memory for emotional stimuli

Aims: Drugs of abuse have been shown to affect memory in both animals and humans. However, little is known about drug effects specifically on emotional memory in humans. Stimulant drugs increase positive mood, and as such it is possible that they could preferentially enhance either encoding or retrieval memory for positive emotional stimuli. In this study we investigated the effects of d-amphetamine (AMP) on retrieval of memory for emotional material in humans. We hypothesized that AMP would enhance retrieval of emotional material, particularly for positive emotional stimuli, possibly through its effects on mood. Methods: Participants attended an encoding session in which they viewed standardized positive, neutral, and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al., 1999). Exactly 48h later they attended a retrieval session testing their memory of these stimuli. A between-subject design was utilized in which participants were randomly assigned to receive either AMP (20mg) or placebo (PL) during encoding and either AMP or PL during retrieval. Results: The results presented here are limited to the AMP or PL at retrieval. Data collection is currently ongoing, and to date 22 participants have received AMP in the retrieval session and 13 participants have received PL. Preliminary results show that, regardless of drug administered at encoding, participants receiving AMP at retrieval showed enhanced memory for studied items (p= .036), as well as increased false memory (p= .019), but thus far these effects are not specific to emotional stimuli. Conclusions: As data collection progresseswewill testwhether AMPpreferentially altersmemory for positive stimuli, andwhether memory is related to subjective mood response to AMP. We hypothesize that greater AMP-induced positive moodwill be associatedwithpreferentialmemory forpositive stimuli, thusproviding a potentialmechanism throughwhichAMPeffects onmemorymay promote further use. Financial support: Research supported by NIDA grants R21 DA031796 and F32 DA033756.

Investigating the influence of a glucose drink on emotional memory

The ingestion of a glucose drink has been shown to reliably facilitate declarative memory. However, it remains unclear as to how circulatory levels of glucose influences memory for emotional material, with contradictory findings reported in the literature. Emotional material evokes a natural memory advantage, with measurable increases in circulatory glucose levels being observed in response to emotional words (in the absence of glucose administration). Increased glucose levels (naturally occurring or through an intervention) however, have not been shown to reliably facilitate emotional material. This randomised, placebo-controlled, crossover design, was employed to further investigate the influence of glucose ingestion on memory for emotional words in healthy adults (N = 29; age: 18–49 years). This population is most susceptible to glucose facilitation during more cognitively demanding tasks. A dual task manipulation (alternating hand movement sequences) was introduced during the encoding phase. The glucose drink did not influence memory for emotional words in this study. A main effect of emotion was found, with memory for emotional words (positive and negative) being greater than for neutral words, both at immediate and delayed recall. The results contrast with similar research, which has previously observed improved memory for only negative items. It may be that the memory measures utilised in this study were not sensitive enough to detect any subtle changes to memory induced by a glucose load. Differential physiological responses were observed in response to drink type. Heart rate was found to decrease upon presentation of negative words, following placebo but not glucose. The mechanism underlying this effect is unclear.

Examining the effect of spinal cord injury on emotional awareness, expressivity and memory for emotional material

The prevailing view on the effects of spinal cord injury (SCI) on emotion is that it dampens emotional experience due to a loss of peripheral bodily feedback, with the higher the lesion on the spinal cord the greater the reduction in the intensity of emotional experience. This view persists despite many studies showing an absence of such an emotional impairment in people with SCI. This study specifically aimed to investigate whether total cervical-6 spinal cord transection (i) reduces emotional expressivity and emotional awareness (ii) impairs memory for emotional material. The study contained three groups: 24 patients with SCI, 20 orthopaedic injury control (OIC) patients and 20 young adult controls. A mixed factor design was employed to examine between group and within subject differences. Participants completed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ), and viewed an emotionally arousing slide presentation. Thirty minutes post viewing, participants completed memory tests for the presentation. SCI patients reported greater present levels of emotional expressivity compared with perceived levels prior to their injuries. SCI and OIC groups did not differ on any of the emotional awareness variables. There was also no evidence that SCI leads to impairment in memory for emotional events. This study's findings contradict the mainstream view in the cognitive neuroscience of emotion that SCI dampens emotional experience.

The effects of glucose dose and dual-task performance on memory for emotional material

Whilst previous research has shown that glucose administration can boost memory performance, research investigating the effects of glucose on memory for emotional material has produced mixed findings. Whereas some research has shown that glucose impairs memory for emotional material, other research has shown that glucose has no effect on emotional items. The aim of the present research was therefore to provide further investigation of the role of glucose on the recognition of words with emotional valence by exploring effects of dose and dual-task performance, both of which affect glucose facilitation effects. The results replicated past research in showing that glucose administration, regardless of dose or dual-task conditions, did not affect the memorial advantage enjoyed by emotional material. This therefore suggests an independent relationship between blood glucose levels and memory for emotional material.

Dysphoria and memory for emotional material: A diffusion-model analysis

Depression-related differences in memory for emotional material are well established, but recognition memory and lexical decision tasks often fail to produce consistent results. The null results from these tasks could be due to inadequacies in traditional analyses rather than the absence of effects. In particular, analyses of accuracy or mean reaction times rely on only a fraction of the behavioural data and are sensitive to individual differences in response biases. The diffusion model addresses these limitations by incorporating all of the behavioural data and separating out response biases. We applied the diffusion model to data from lexical decision and recognition memory tasks and showed consistent effects, specifically a positive emotional bias in non-dysphoric subjects and even-handedness in dysphoric subjects. This pattern was not apparent with comparisons of reaction times or accuracy, consistent with previous null findings. These results suggest a relationship between dysphoria and the internal representation of emotional information.

When the half-full glass is appraised as half empty and memorised as completely empty: Mood-congruent true and false recognition in depression is modulated by salience

Since the 1980s a large body of empirical effort has been devoted to mood-congruent memory (MCM) biases in clinical depression. Whereas there is broad, albeit not unequivocal, evidence that depressive patients retain negative-valenced memory items better than neutral material, few studies have investigated false memories in depression. In a pilot study we gathered support for both enhanced true and false memory for emotional material in depression. The present study aimed to extend these preliminary findings. In view of investigations suggesting that arousing and meaningful stimuli have facilitated access to memory, personal salience was considered a moderator for MCM. In the present study 21 depressed and 22 healthy participants were presented six false memory lists dealing with neutral, negative, and positive themes. At recognition, each item had to be appraised for its degree of valence subsequent to an old–new judgement. Pre-categorised and subjective valence did not discriminate groups. However, relative to controls depressed patients showed both more veridical as well as false recognition for items that concurrently elicited higher salience ratings in patients. In contrast, group differences in recognition performance did not significantly affect salience ratings. Results indicate that salience modulates MCM and may account for discrepancies in the literature.

Differentiation in cognitive and emotional meanings: An evolutionary analysis

It is often argued that human emotions, and the cognitions that accompany them, involve refinements of, and extensions to, more basic functionality shared with other species. Such refinements may rely on common or on distinct processes and representations. Multi-level theories of cognition and affect make distinctions between qualitatively different types of representations often dealing with bodily, affective and cognitive attributes of self-related meanings. This paper will adopt a particular multi-level perspective on mental architecture and show how a mechanism of subsystem differentiation could have allowed an evolutionarily “old” role for emotion in the control of action to have altered into one more closely coupled to meaning systems. We conclude by outlining some illustrative consequences of our analysis that might usefully be addressed in research in comparative psychology, cognitive archaeology, and in laboratory research on memory for emotional material.

Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies.

Research suggests a positivity effect in older adults' memory for emotional material, but the evidence from the attentional domain is mixed. The present study combined 2 methodologies for studying preferences in visual attention, eye tracking, and dot-probe, as younger and older adults viewed synthetic emotional faces. Eye tracking most consistently revealed a positivity effect in older adults' attention, so that older adults showed preferential looking toward happy faces and away from sad faces. Dot-probe results were less robust, but in the same direction. Methodological and theoretical implications for the study of socioemotional aging are discussed.

Changes in memory for emotional material in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

The current study sought to examine the performance of non-demented ALS patients on neuropsychological tests involving emotional perception and memory. Nineteen non-demented patients with ALS were compared with 20 healthy controls on assessments of facial expression recognition, social judgement ratings of faces and recognition memory for emotional words. Patients and controls were well matched to exclude a range of potentially confounding variables. The patients and controls demonstrated significant differences on only one test of cognitive functioning. The ALS group demonstrated a failure to show the normative pattern of enhanced recognition memory for emotional words compared to neutral words and produced higher scores than controls on recognition memory for neutral words. These findings suggest that patients with ALS show a different pattern of cognitive performance with respect to memory for emotional material when compared to healthy adults.

Memory for emotional stimuli in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Although a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is memory impairment, there is speculation that recall may be enhanced when an emotional component is associated with an event. The current study aims to assess whether patients with AD would recall emotionally laden material better than neutral stimuli. DSM-IV-diagnosed AD patients with mild to moderate dementia, as well as groups of young and elderly healthy controls, participated in this study. All subjects were administered three word lists for three trials each. The words were positive, negative, or neutral in valence and matched for concreteness, emotionality, and pleasantness. As expected, the controls performed significantly better than the AD patients. Importantly, the pattern of recall for the emotions was different, such that both control groups recalled all emotions equally, whereas the AD patients recalled significantly more negative words than positive or neutral. These findings of improved immediate memory for emotional material in AD lends support to the notion that mnemonic functions are differentially affected in the disease.

Impaired declarative memory for emotional material following bilateral amygdala damage in humans

Impaired declarative memory for emotional material following bilateral amygdala damage in humans