Neuroimaging of source memory: Effects of emotion

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Observations in everyday life provide abundant evidence that facts and events associated with strong emotion are better remembered than those that are not. In many circumstances, contextual details are also more likely to be remembered for emotional as compared to neutral events. For example, nearly everyone approximately 6 years or older in 1963 claims to remember their whereabouts at the moment they learned that JFK had been assassinated (Winograd & Killinger, 1983). Laboratory studies have confirmed that individuals are more likely to remember emotional information than neutral information, and often remember more details surrounding the presentation of emotional information as compared to neutral information (Heuer & Reisberg, 1990; Cahill & McGaugh, 1995; Kensinger et al., 2002). The proposed studies examine the neural correlates of this effect, and test the prediction that amygdalar modulation of prefrontal function (critical for encoding of contextual detail) and hippocampal function (critical for binding an item and its context together) underlies the effect.