Memory Control: A Fundamental Mechanism of Emotion Regulation

Effects of psychosocial stress on prosociality: the moderating role of current life stress and thought control

To date, only a few studies have examined whether and when stressed individuals are still prosocially motivated and willing to help others, which is in contrast to the relevance and importance that helping others has for our society. The present study investigates the impact of affective and biopsychological acute stress responses on prosociality (prosocial motivation, helping behavior) under controlled laboratory conditions. In addition, it was examined whether this relationship is affected by individuals' current life stress and the cognitive ability to keep stress-related thoughts at bay. To induce acute stress responses (heart rate, negative affect, salivary alpha-amylase, cortisol), 55 individuals (28 women, M = 24 years old, SD = 4.53) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Current life stress (cortisol) was assessed over two days of participants' everyday lives. Thought control ability was assessed with the think/no-think paradigm and was additionally manipulated after the acute stress intervention (TSST) via instructions. The results showed that acute stress was positively associated with prosociality. Specifically, negative affect was positively related to prosocial motivation and salivary alpha-amylase was positively associated with helping behavior. Current life stress moderated the relationship between salivary cortisol and helping behavior: the association was positive at low levels of current life stress. The instruction to control one's thoughts but not participants' general ability to do so reduced stress responses (negative affect). In sum, the findings suggest that prosociality increases following acute stress and that this effect depends on the level of current life stress. Additionally, adopting the strategy of controlling stress-related thoughts was found to be promising for attenuating individuals' stress responses.

Prefrontal-hippocampal interactions supporting the extinction of emotional memories: the retrieval stopping model

Neuroimaging has revealed robust interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus when people stop memory retrieval. Efforts to stop retrieval can arise when people encounter reminders to unpleasant thoughts they prefer not to think about. Retrieval stopping suppresses hippocampal and amygdala activity, especially when cues elicit aversive memory intrusions, via a broad inhibitory control capacity enabling prepotent response suppression. Repeated retrieval stopping reduces intrusions of unpleasant memories and diminishes their affective tone, outcomes resembling those achieved by the extinction of conditioned emotional responses. Despite this resemblance, the role of inhibitory fronto-hippocampal interactions and retrieval stopping broadly in extinction has received little attention. Here we integrate human and animal research on extinction and retrieval stopping. We argue that reconceptualising extinction to integrate mnemonic inhibitory control with learning would yield a greater understanding of extinction's relevance to mental health. We hypothesize that fear extinction spontaneously engages retrieval stopping across species, and that controlled suppression of hippocampal and amygdala activity by the prefrontal cortex reduces fearful thoughts. Moreover, we argue that retrieval stopping recruits extinction circuitry to achieve affect regulation, linking extinction to how humans cope with intrusive thoughts. We discuss novel hypotheses derived from this theoretical synthesis.

EEG evidence that morally relevant autobiographical memories can be suppressed

Remembering unpleasant events can trigger negative feelings. Fortunately, research indicates that unwanted retrieval can be suppressed to prevent memories from intruding into awareness, improving our mental state. The current scientific understanding of retrieval suppression, however, is based mostly on simpler memories, such as associations between words or pictures, which may not reflect how people control unpleasant memory intrusions in everyday life. Here, we investigated the neural and behavioural dynamics of suppressing personal and emotional autobiographical memories using a modified version of the Think/No-Think task. We asked participants to suppress memories of their own past immoral actions, which were hypothesised to be both highly intrusive and motivating to suppress. We report novel evidence from behavioural, ERP, and EEG oscillation measures that autobiographical memory retrieval can be suppressed and suggest that autobiographical suppression recruits similar neurocognitive mechanisms as suppression of simple laboratory associations. Suppression did fail sometimes, and EEG oscillations indicated that such memory intrusions occurred from lapses in sustained control. Importantly, however, participants improved at limiting intrusions with repeated practice. Furthermore, both behavioural and EEG evidence indicated that intentional suppression may be more difficult for memories of our morally wrong actions than memories of our morally right actions. The findings elucidate the neurocognitive correlates of autobiographical retrieval suppression and have implications for theories of morally motivated memory control.

A proposed mechanism for the MDMA-mediated extinction of traumatic memories in PTSD patients treated with MDMA-assisted therapy

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a devastating psychiatric disorder afflicting millions of people around the world. Characterized by severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, pervasive nightmares, an assortment of somatic symptoms, associations with severe long-term health problems, and an elevated risk of suicide, as much as 40-70% of patients suffer from refractory disease. 3,4-Methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), like classic psychedelics such as psilocybin, have been used to enhance the efficacy of psychotherapy almost since their discovery, but due to their perceived potential for abuse and inclusion on USFDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) schedule 1, research into the mechanism by which they produce improvements in PTSD symptomology has been limited. Nevertheless, several compelling rationales have been explored, with the pro-social effects of MDMA thought to enhance therapeutic alliance and thus facilitate therapist-assisted trauma processing. This may be insufficient to fully explain the efficacy of MDMA in the treatment of psychiatric illness. Molecular mechanisms such as the MDMA mediated increase of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) availability in the fear memory learning pathways combined with MDMA's pro-social effects may provide a more nuanced explanation for the therapeutic actions of MDMA.

Inhibitory Mechanisms in the Processing of Negations: A Neural Reuse Hypothesis

Negation is known to have inhibitory consequences for the information under its scope. However, how it produces such effects remains poorly understood. Recently, it has been proposed that negation processing might be implemented at the neural level by the recruitment of inhibitory and cognitive control mechanisms. On this line, this manuscript offers the hypothesis that negation reuses general-domain mechanisms that subserve inhibition in other non-linguistic cognitive functions. The first two sections describe the inhibitory effects of negation on conceptual representations and its embodied effects, as well as the theoretical foundations for the reuse hypothesis. The next section describes the neurophysiological evidence that linguistic negation interacts with response inhibition, along with the suggestion that both functions share inhibitory mechanisms. Finally, the manuscript concludes that the functional relation between negation and inhibition observed at the mechanistic level could be easily integrated with predominant cognitive models of negation processing.

Behavioral, Anatomical and Heritable Convergence of Affect and Cognition in Superior Frontal Cortex

Cognitive abilities and affective experience are key human traits that are interrelated in behavior and brain. Individual variation of cognitive and affective traits, as well as brain structure, has been shown to partly underlie genetic effects. However, to what extent affect and cognition have a shared genetic relationship with local brain structure is incompletely understood. Here we studied phenotypic and genetic correlations of cognitive and affective traits in behavior and brain structure (cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volumes) in the pedigree-based Human Connectome Project sample (N = 1091). Both cognitive and affective trait scores were highly heritable and showed significant phenotypic correlation on the behavioral level. Cortical thickness in the left superior frontal cortex showed a phenotypic association with both affect and cognition. Decomposing the phenotypic correlations into genetic and environmental components showed that the associations were accounted for by shared genetic effects between the traits. Quantitative functional decoding of the left superior frontal cortex further indicated that this region is associated with cognitive and emotional functioning. This study provides a multi-level approach to study the association between affect and cognition and suggests a convergence of both in superior frontal cortical thickness.

Functional connectivity between right-lateralized ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and insula mediates reappraisal's link to memory control

BACKGROUND

Memory control (MC) ability is critical for people's mental and physical health. Previous research had conceptually demonstrated that MC ability has close relationship with reappraisal. However, experimental evidence supporting the relationship was limited. Thus, in the present study, we investigated how MC and reappraisal are linked, both in behavior and in the brain.

METHODS

The habitual use of reappraisal was assessed by Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and memory control ability was measured through directed forgetting task. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to test the seed-based functional connectivity in 181 healthy subjects.

RESULTS

Behavioral results revealed that more frequent reappraisal was associated with an enhanced ability to control negative memories. Resting-state seed-based functional connectivity showed that habitual use of reappraisal was positively related to the strength of functional connectivity between the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and right insula. Most importantly, this functional connectivity mediated the effect of habitual use of reappraisal on control over negative memories.

LIMITATIONS

Present results mainly showed the habitual use of reappraisal was related with MC ability in negative items. Future study could further explore the relationship between MC ability of different categories of negative emotional memories and other kinds of ER strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support the notion that reappraisal provides opportunities for individuals to practice and enhance inhibitory control-a relationship underpinned by connectivity between the right VLPFC and right insula.

Common neural and transcriptional correlates of inhibitory control underlie emotion regulation and memory control

Inhibitory control is crucial for regulating emotions and may also enable memory control. However, evidence for their shared neurobiological correlates is limited. Here, we report meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies on emotion regulation, or memory control and link neural commonalities to transcriptional commonalities using the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA). Based on 95 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, we reveal a role of the right inferior parietal lobule embedded in a frontal–parietal–insular network during emotion regulation and memory control, which is similarly recruited during response inhibition. These co-activation patterns also overlap with the networks associated with ‘inhibition’, ‘cognitive control’ and ‘working memory’ when consulting the Neurosynth. Using the AHBA, we demonstrate that emotion regulation- and memory control-related brain activity patterns are associated with transcriptional profiles of a specific set of ‘inhibition-related’ genes. Gene ontology enrichment analysis of these ‘inhibition-related’ genes reveal associations with the neuronal transmission and risk for major psychiatric disorders as well as seizures and alcoholic dependence. In summary, this study identified a neural network and a set of genes associated with inhibitory control across emotion regulation and memory control. These findings facilitate our understanding of the neurobiological correlates of inhibitory control and may contribute to the development of brain stimulation and pharmacological interventions.

Attention bias modification in drug addiction: Enhancing control of subsequent habits

A relapse in addiction is often precipitated by heightened attention bias to drug-related cues, underpinned by a subcortically mediated transition to habitual/automatized responding and reduced prefrontal control. Modification of such automatized attention bias is a fundamental, albeit elusive, target for relapse reduction. Here, on a trial-by-trial basis, we used electroencephalography and eye tracking with a task that assessed, in this order, drug cue reactivity, its instructed self-regulation via reappraisal, and the immediate aftereffects on spontaneous (i.e., not instructed and automatized) attention bias. The results show that cognitive reappraisal, a facet of prefrontal control, decreased spontaneous attention bias to drug-related cues in cocaine-addicted individuals, more so in those with less frequent recent use. The results point to the mechanisms underlying the disruption of automatized maladaptive drug-related attention bias in cocaine addiction. These results pave the way for future studies to examine the role of such habit disruption in reducing compulsive drug seeking outside the controlled laboratory environment, with the ultimate goal of developing a readily deployable cognitive-behavioral and personalized intervention for drug addiction.

Cognitive Control, Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation in Depression: A New Proposal for an Integrative Interplay Model

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking (i.e., rumination) for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood.

A biological framework for emotional dysregulation in alcohol misuse: from gut to brain

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been associated with impairments in social and emotional cognition that play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of addiction. Repeated alcohol intoxications trigger inflammatory processes and sensitise the immune system. In addition, emerging data point to perturbations in the gut microbiome as a key regulator of the inflammatory cascade in AUD. Inflammation and social cognition are potent modulators of one another. At the same time, accumulating evidence implicates the gut microbiome in shaping emotional and social cognition, suggesting the possibility of a common underlying loop of crucial importance for addiction. Here we propose an integrative microbiome neuro-immuno-affective framework of how emotional dysregulation and alcohol-related microbiome dysbiosis could accelerate the cycle of addiction. We outline the overlapping effects of chronic alcohol use, inflammation and microbiome alterations on the fronto-limbic circuitry as a convergence hub for emotional dysregulation. We discuss the interdependent relationship of social cognition, immunity and the microbiome in relation to alcohol misuse- from binge drinking to addiction. In addition, we emphasise adolescence as a sensitive period for the confluence of alcohol harmful effects and emotional dysregulation in the developing gut-brain axis.

Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders

Intrusive memories are a common feature of many psychopathologies, and suppression-induced forgetting of unwanted memories appears as a critical ability to preserve mental health. In recent years, biological and cognitive studies converged in revealing that forgetting is due to active processes. Recent neurobiological studies provide evidence on the active role of main neurotransmitter systems in forgetting, suggesting that the brain actively works to suppress retrieval of unwanted memories. On the cognitive side, there is evidence that voluntary and involuntary processes (here termed "intentional" and "incidental" forgetting, respectively) contribute to active forgetting. In intentional forgetting, an inhibitory control mechanism suppresses awareness of unwanted memories at encoding or retrieval. In incidental forgetting, retrieval practice of some memories involuntarily suppresses the retrieval of other related memories. In this review we describe recent findings on deficits in active forgetting observed in psychopathologies, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Moreover, we report studies in which the role of neurotransmitter systems, known to be involved in the pathogenesis of mental disorders, has been investigated in active forgetting paradigms. The possibility that biological and cognitive mechanisms of active forgetting could be considered as hallmarks of the early onset of psychopathologies is also discussed.

Sleep Loss Gives Rise to Intrusive Thoughts

We propose a framework in which top-down inhibitory control networks are impaired by sleep deprivation, giving rise to intrusive thoughts and, consequently, emotion dysregulation. This process leads to a vicious cycle of sleeplessness, persistent unwanted thoughts, and heightened anxiety, ultimately increasing the risk of mental illness.

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Voluntary forgetting of unwanted memories is an adaptive cognitive function. However, it remains unknown how voluntary forgetting of unwanted social feedback may influence subsequent memories and evaluations, and what the underlying neurocognitive processes are. Here, we presented participants with peer photos together with feedback indicating social acceptance or rejection, followed by "remember" or "forget" instructive cues, while electroencephalograms were recorded during the experiment. We examined the Directed Forgetting (DF) effect in a recognition memory test, and tested participants' explicit and implicit attitudes toward the peers using a social evaluation task and an affect misattribution procedure (AMP). Both the memory test and the AMP were examined immediately and 3 days after the DF task so to estimate both the instant and the long-term effects of memory control. Behaviorally, immediate memory test showed smaller DF effect for positive than negative social feedback, which suggests that forgetting positive social feedback was more difficult than forgetting negative social feedback. Regarding the ERP results, although participants showed comparable frontal N2 amplitudes (reflecting inhibitory control efforts) following the instruction of forgetting positive and negative social feedback, positive feedback elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than negative feedback during initial encoding phase, suggesting an encoding bias for positive self-relevant information. Intriguingly, voluntary efforts to forget negative social feedback enhanced people's explicit and implicit evaluations toward the feedback senders. These findings provide new evidence for the adaptive function of memory control, which broadens the influence of voluntary forgetting in the context of social interaction and social evaluation.

Sleep reactivation did not boost suppression-induced forgetting

Sleep's role in memory consolidation is widely acknowledged, but its role in weakening memories is still debated. Memory weakening is evolutionary beneficial and makes an integral contribution to cognition. We sought evidence on whether sleep-based memory reactivation can facilitate memory suppression. Participants learned pairs of associable words (e.g., DIET-CREAM) and were then exposed to hint words (e.g., DIET) and instructed to either recall ("think") or suppress ("no-think") the corresponding target words (e.g., CREAM). As expected, suppression impaired retention when tested immediately after a 90-min nap. To test if reactivation could selectively enhance memory suppression during sleep, we unobtrusively presented one of two sounds conveying suppression instructions during sleep, followed by hint words. Results showed that targeted memory reactivation did not enhance suppression-induced forgetting. Although not predicted, post-hoc analyses revealed that sleep cues strengthened memory, but only for suppressed pairs that were weakly encoded before sleep. The results leave open the question of whether memory suppression can be augmented during sleep, but suggest strategies for future studies manipulating memory suppression during sleep. Additionally, our findings support the notion that sleep reactivation is particularly beneficial for weakly encoded information, which may be prioritized for consolidation.

An Analysis of the Relationship between the Modified Theory of Planned Behavior and Leisure Rumination of Korean Employees

An increasing trend among employees has been to engage in leisure activities, which has been proven to be an effective method of overcoming work stress. As a result, employees are doing "Other Things" (i.e., non-work activities) as a way to relieve stress. Based on the existing studies on rumination, this study considered doing "Other Things" as a new concept of "leisure rumination" and identified its influence as a means to help employees recover from work stress. Accordingly, this study provided basic data on the meaning of leisure activities and leisure rumination in office workers who suffer from failure to recover from work stress using partial least squares structural equation modeling. This study was conducted on employees residing in the Seoul metropolitan area and the Gyeongsang-do district in November 2019 through a structured questionnaire. The results of this study verified the significance of leisure rumination and the possibility of it being utilized as a practical research tool for leisure activities. Our findings may be considered when planning interventions for work addiction and burnout through leisure rumination.

Dysfunctional coupling of the parahippocampal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus during memory suppression in posttraumatic stress disorder

The current study aimed to identify alterations in brain activation and connectivity related to memory suppression in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using the Think/No-Think paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Reduced activation in the parahippocampal cortex during No-Think vs. Baseline trials was found in participants with PTSD compared to controls with no history of trauma (pFWE<0.05). Trauma-related intrusive memories (r = 0.562, p = 0.046) and avoidance behaviors (r = 0.636, p = 0.020) were positively correlated with parahippocampal cortex activation during memory suppression in the PTSD group. Psychophysiological interactions (PPI) analysis identified increased functional connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the parahippocampus during memory suppression in the PTSD group compared to trauma-free controls (pFWE<0.05). Our findings support a network-based phenotype for altered memory suppression in individuals with PTSD rooted in dysfunctional parahippocampal-prefrontal coupling. These data validate neural models of PTSD and offer a novel neural circuit for brain-based interventions targeting trauma-related memory.

Investigating the mediating effect of working memory on intentional forgetting in dysphoria

Our aim was to determine if deficits in intentional forgetting that are associated with depression and dysphoria (subclinical depression) could be explained, at least in part, by variations in working memory function. Sixty dysphoric and 61 non-dysphoric participants completed a modified version of the think/no-think (TNT) task and a measure of complex working memory (the operation span task). The TNT task involved participants learning a series of emotional cue-target word pairs, before being presented with a subset of the cues and asked to either recall the associated target (think) or to prevent it from coming to mind (no think) by thinking about a substitute target word. Participants were subsequently asked to recall the targets to all cues (regardless of previous recall instructions). As expected, after controlling for anxiety, we found that dysphoric individuals exhibited impaired forgetting relative to the non-dysphoric participants. Also as expected, we found that superior working memory function was associated with more successful forgetting. Critically, in the dysphoric group, we found that working memory mediated the effect of depression on intentional forgetting. That is, depression influenced forgetting indirectly via its effect on working memory. However, under conditions of repeated suppression, there was also a direct effect of depression on forgetting. These findings represent an important development in the understanding of impaired forgetting in depression and also suggest that working memory training might be a viable intervention for improving the ability of depressed individuals to prevent unwanted memories from coming to mind.

The role of frontal-subcortical connectivity in the relation between coping styles and reactivity and downregulation of negative emotion

Coping styles (CS) reflect individuals' habitual use of strategies for coping with negative events in daily life. Although research into coping has not reached consistent agreement about classifying coping strategies as either inherently adaptive or maladaptive, the influence of maladaptive CS on mental health is noticeable. CS might also be related to emotion regulation and associated brain systems. Participants (N = 165) completed measurements of CS, trait emotions including trait anxiety, depressive symptoms and happiness and then performed an emotion regulation task, in conjunction with functional MRI. Individual differences in maladaptive CS use were associated with higher trait negative emotionality and higher state reactivity of negative emotion. Concurrent bilateral amygdala-right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) connectivity during passive negative stimulus processing mediated the relation between maladaptive CS and negative emotion ratings. Psychophysiological interaction analyses showed that maladaptive and adaptive CS were linked to patterns of frontal-subcortical connectivity during state emotion regulation. These results suggest that maladaptive CS might be related to negative emotion processing and weaker spontaneous regulation and indicate that maladaptive CS is a risk factor in individual mental health.

Stress Impairs Intentional Memory Control through Altered Theta Oscillations in Lateral Parietal Cortex

Accumulating evidence suggests that forgetting is not necessarily a passive process but that we can, to some extent, actively control what we remember and what we forget. Although this intentional control of memory has potentially far-reaching implications, the factors that influence our capacity to intentionally control our memory are largely unknown. Here, we tested whether acute stress may disrupt the intentional control of memory and, if so, through which neural mechanism. We exposed healthy men and women to a stress (n = 27) or control (n = 26) procedure before they aimed repeatedly to retrieve some previously learned cue-target pairs and to actively suppress others. While control participants showed reduced memory for suppressed compared with baseline pairs in a subsequent memory test, this suppression-induced forgetting was completely abolished after stress. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we show that the reduced ability to suppress memories after stress is associated with altered theta activity in the inferior temporal cortex when the control process (retrieval or suppression) is triggered and in the lateral parietal cortex when control is exerted, with the latter being directly correlated with the stress hormone cortisol. Moreover, the suppression-induced forgetting was linked to altered connectivity between the hippocampus and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), which in turn was negatively correlated to stress-induced cortisol increases. These findings provide novel insights into conditions under which our capacity to actively control our memory breaks down and may have considerable implications for stress-related psychopathologies, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that are characterized by unwanted memories of distressing events.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT It is typically assumed that forgetting is a passive process that can hardly be controlled. There is, however, evidence that we may actively control, to some extent, what we remember and what we forget. This intentional memory control has considerable implications for mental disorders in which patients suffer from unwanted (e.g., traumatic) memories. Here, we demonstrate that the capacity to intentionally control our memory breaks down after stress. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we show that this stress-induced memory control deficit is linked to altered activity in the lateral parietal cortex and the connectivity between the hippocampus and right prefrontal cortex (PFC). These findings provide novel insights into conditions under which memory control fails and are highly relevant in the context of stress-related psychopathologies.

Long-term modulation of cardiac activity induced by inhibitory control over emotional memories

Efforts to exclude past experiences from conscious awareness can lead to forgetting. Memory suppression is central to affective disorders, but we still do not really know whether emotions, including their physiological causes, are also impacted by this process in normal functioning individuals. In two studies, we measured the after-effects of suppressing negative memories on cardiac response in healthy participants. Results of Study 1 revealed that efficient control of memories was associated with long-term inhibition of the cardiac deceleration that is normally induced by disgusting stimuli. Attempts to suppress sad memories, by contrast, aggravated the cardiac response, an effect that was closely related to the inability to forget this specific material. In Study 2, electroencephalography revealed a reduction in power in the theta (3-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz) and low-beta (13-20 Hz) bands during the suppression of unwanted memories, compared with their voluntary recall. Interestingly, however, the reduction of power in the theta frequency band during memory control was related to a subsequent inhibition of the cardiac response. These results provide a neurophysiological basis for the influence of memory control mechanisms on the cardiac system, opening up new avenues and questions for treating intrusive memories using motivated forgetting.

Active Forgetting: Adaptation of Memory by Prefrontal Control

Over the past century, psychologists have discussed whether forgetting might arise from active mechanisms that promote memory loss to achieve various functions, such as minimizing errors, facilitating learning, or regulating one's emotional state. The past decade has witnessed a great expansion in knowledge about the brain mechanisms underlying active forgetting in its varying forms. A core discovery concerns the role of the prefrontal cortex in exerting top-down control over mnemonic activity in the hippocampus and other brain structures, often via inhibitory control. New findings reveal that such processes not only induce forgetting of specific memories but also can suppress the operation of mnemonic processes more broadly, triggering windows of anterograde and retrograde amnesia in healthy people. Recent work extends active forgetting to nonhuman animals, presaging the development of a multilevel mechanistic account that spans the cognitive, systems, network, and even cellular levels. This work reveals how organisms adapt their memories to their cognitive and emotional goals and has implications for understanding vulnerability to psychiatric disorders.

Psychological mechanisms and functions of 5-HT and SSRIs in potential therapeutic change: Lessons from the serotonergic modulation of action selection, learning, affect, and social cognition

Uncertainty regarding which psychological mechanisms are fundamental in mediating SSRI treatment outcomes and wide-ranging variability in their efficacy has raised more questions than it has solved. Since subjective mood states are an abstract scientific construct, only available through self-report in humans, and likely involving input from multiple top-down and bottom-up signals, it has been difficult to model at what level SSRIs interact with this process. Converging translational evidence indicates a role for serotonin in modulating context-dependent parameters of action selection, affect, and social cognition; and concurrently supporting learning mechanisms, which promote adaptability and behavioural flexibility. We examine the theoretical basis, ecological validity, and interaction of these constructs and how they may or may not exert a clinical benefit. Specifically, we bridge crucial gaps between disparate lines of research, particularly findings from animal models and human clinical trials, which often seem to present irreconcilable differences. In determining how SSRIs exert their effects, our approach examines the endogenous functions of 5-HT neurons, how 5-HT manipulations affect behaviour in different contexts, and how their therapeutic effects may be exerted in humans - which may illuminate issues of translational models, hierarchical mechanisms, idiographic variables, and social cognition.

Varieties of graded forgetting

Forgetting is typically viewed as counterproductive in everyday life. However, it may mainly be harmful when it is complete, that is, all-encompassing and permanent, and not when it is graded, that is, partial and fluctuating. I propose that forgetting is in fact mostly graded, and that this is an essential reason that it is often helpful. I delineate three ways in which forgetting may be graded. First, it may occur with respect to one, but not another, part of a memory. Second, it may occur in one context, but not in another. Third, forgetting may be present at one point in time, but not at another. Also, I propose that different levels of forgetting are possible, based on whether an engram or a context is unavailable, silent, restricted, latent, or potent. Overall, I hypothesize that forgetting is often helpful because it can be flexible and tailored to the circumstances.

Neurocognitive predictors of long-term outcome in CBT for late life generalized anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is currently recognized as one of the most common and impairing psychiatric conditions in adults age 65 and over. Although clinical trials have indicated that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is efficacious, it has not shown consistent superiority over other types of psychosocial interventions. This study sought to identify baseline neurocognitive predictors of posttreatment and distal follow-up outcome of CBT for late life GAD, which could be used to estimate response and optimize the intervention. First, results indicated that CBT was effective in reducing worry and other symptoms immediately following and 18 months after the last full session of treatment. Regression models of baseline predictors included pretreatment worry scores, the number of comorbid conditions, hypertension, and scores on a working memory task or hippocampal volumes as predictors of endpoint PSWQ scores. Results replicated known baseline predictors of outcome at both assessment points, and identified one new predictor of distal outcome. Clinicians may benefit from including working memory tasks as assessment and augmentation tools in treating older GAD patients.

Social cognition in an adult epilepsy patient with developmental amnesia

Reports on social cognition in patients with developmental amnesia resulting from bilateral hippocampal lesions are rare, although the link between social cognition and temporal lobe structures is well established. We present the case of a 23-year-old male epilepsy patient, BM, with developmental amnesia due to perinatal cerebral hypoxia. The patient was examined with neuroimaging and neuropsychological methods and compared to IQ-matched patients with epilepsy to control for effects of epilepsy. In addition, we used a test battery that evaluates emotion recognition and theory of mind to study his social cognition abilities. Structural high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging showed bilateral hippocampal atrophy. The comparison to controls showed that, in addition to the well-documented memory disorders in developmental amnesia, BM showed remarkable deficits in 9 out of 17 social cognitive tasks assessing emotion recognition and theory of mind. In contrast, BM's performance on tasks of executive functions was largely preserved. The relevance of deficits in social cognition for patients with developmental amnesia is discussed.

Multiple large-scale neural networks underlying emotion regulation

Recent models suggest emotion generation, perception, and regulation rely on multiple, interacting large-scale brain networks. Despite the wealth of research in this field, the exact functional nature and different topological features of these neural networks remain elusive. Here, we addressed both using a well-established data-driven meta-analytic grouping approach. We applied k-means clustering to a large set of previously published experiments investigating emotion regulation (independent of strategy, goal and stimulus type) to segregate the results of these experiments into large-scale networks. To elucidate the functional nature of these distinct networks, we used functional decoding of metadata terms (i.e. task-level descriptions and behavioral domains). We identified four large-scale brain networks. The first two were related to regulation and functionally characterized by a stronger focus on response inhibition or executive control versus appraisal or language processing. In contrast, the second two networks were primarily related to emotion generation, appraisal, and physiological processes. We discuss how our findings corroborate and inform contemporary models of emotion regulation and thereby significantly add to the literature.

Differences in Working Memory With Emotional Distraction Between Proficient and Non-proficient Bilinguals

The impact of bilingual education and bilingual experience on working memory has been an important and controversial issue in the field of psycholinguistics. Taking Chinese-English bilinguals as an example, this study aims to investigate the differences in emotional working memory between proficient and non-proficient bilinguals by using delayed matching-to-sample task paradigm and the more complex N-back task in emotional contexts. The results show that proficient bilinguals may have better performance on both of these two working memory tasks than non-proficient bilinguals, and the advantage effects can be more apparent under high memory load conditions. In addition, the negative emotion context could have a positive impact on complex N-back tasks. This study supports the notion that bilingual experience can promote the development of an individual's cognitive ability and enable individuals to possess more advantages in working memory even in the presence of emotional contexts.

Both High Cognitive Load and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Right Inferior Frontal Cortex Make Truth and Lie Responses More Similar

Deception scholars have argued that increasing the liar’s cognitive system artificially can produce deception cues. However, if too much load is imposed, the truth tellers’ performance can also be impaired. To address this issue, we designed a veracity task that incorporated a secondary task to increase cognitive load gradually. Also, because deception has been associated with activity in the inferior frontal cortex (IFC), we examined the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the IFC on performance. During stimulation, participants truthfully or deceptively indicated whether each of a number of statements shown on screen was true or not. Higher load decreased recall but not general compliance or response times (RTs). Truthful trials yielded higher compliance rates and faster RTs than deceptive trials except for the highest load level. Anodal right stimulation decreased compliance in truthful trials when participants were not overloaded. Truth telling was more vulnerable to cognitive load and tDCS than lying.

Emotional conflict adaptation predicts intrusive memories

Why do some individuals experience intrusive emotional memories following stressful or traumatic events whereas others do not? Attentional control may contribute to the development of such memories by shielding attention to ongoing tasks from affective reactions to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli. The present study investigated whether individual differences in theability to exert cognitive control are associated with experiencing intrusive emotional memories after laboratory trauma. Sixty-one healthy women provided self-reported and experimentally derived measures of attentional control. They then viewed a trauma film in the laboratory and recorded intrusive memories for one week using a diary. Gaze avoidance during trauma film exposure was associated with more intrusive memories. Greater attentional control over emotion prior to film viewing, as assessed with the experimental task, predicted fewer intrusive memories while self-reported attentional control was unrelated to intrusive memories. Preexisting capacity to shield information processing from distraction may protect individuals from developing intrusive emotional memories following exposure to stress or trauma. These findings provide important clues for prevention and intervention science.

Targeted memory reactivation during sleep boosts intentional forgetting of spatial locations

Although we experience thousands of distinct events on a daily basis, relatively few are committed to memory. The human capacity to intentionally control which events will be remembered has been demonstrated using learning procedures with instructions to purposely avoid committing specific items to memory. In this study, we used a variant of the item-based directed-forgetting procedure and instructed participants to memorize the location of some images but not others on a grid. These instructions were conveyed using a set of auditory cues. Then, during an afternoon nap, we unobtrusively presented a cue that was used to instruct participant to avoid committing the locations of some images to memory. After sleep, memory was worse for to-be-forgotten image locations associated with the presented sound relative to those associated with a sound that was not presented during sleep. We conclude that memory processing during sleep can serve not only to secure memory storage but also to weaken it. Given that intentional suppression may be used to weaken unpleasant memories, such sleep-based strategies may help accelerate treatments for memory-related disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Time to Forget

Abstract. Emerging technologies at work encourage the collection and storage of large amounts of data. However, these vast quantities of data are likely to impair efficient work decisions by employees over time, with negative consequences for the organization. As human attention increasingly represents the scarce resource at work, the present paper focuses on a mechanism of attentional control at work – namely, intentionally forgetting unwanted and outdated internal (e. g., knowledge) and external (e. g., digital objects) information. The purpose of this paper is threefold. Based on a short review of the research on intentional forgetting, a prototypical conceptualization of an interactive assistive system (Dare2Del, cognitive companion) is provided, which should support employees in temporally ignoring or permanently deleting outdated information. Then, we completed a critical incident study to examine why and when employees might want to forget information at work, and to identify in which working situations an assistive system should be particularly helpful.

Imbalance between Emotionally Negative and Positive Life Events Retrieval and the Associated Asymmetry of Brain Activity

Sustained focusing on a negative assessment of life events can create negative background and changes in the emotional feedback to new information. In this regard, it is important to assess the balance between self-assessment of emotional memories and their reflection in brain activity. The study was aimed at exploring the brain activity using electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis in six frequency ranges from delta to beta2 during the retrieval of positive or negative emotional memory compared with the resting state. According to ANOVA results, the most informative for differentiation of emotions were the alpha2 and beta2 rhythms with greater synchronization effect for positive than for negative emotions. The memory retrieval, regardless of the valence of emotions, was accompanied by alpha1 desynchronization at the posterior cortex. Self-assessment of the memory intensity was not significantly different due to emotion valences. However, the scores of positive emotions were related positively with beta2 oscillations at the left anterior temporal site, whereas for negative emotions, at the right one. Thus, the emotional autobiographical memory is reflected by activation processes in the visual cortex and areas associated with multimodal information processing, whereas differentiation of the valence of emotions is presented by the high-frequency oscillations at the temporal cortex areas.

Fifteen Years Controlling Unwanted Thoughts: A Systematic Review of the Thought Control Ability Questionnaire (TCAQ)

Thought control ability is a vulnerability factor implicated in the etiology and maintenance of emotional disorders. This manuscript aims to systematically review the use and psychometric performance of the Thought Control Ability Questionnaire (TCAQ), designed to assess people's ability to control unwanted thoughts. Three electronic databases were searched for papers administering the TCAQ published in indexed peer-reviewed journals. Data (participants characteristics, country, study design, etc.) were extracted from the results for qualitative synthesis. The TCAQ's content validity, dimensionality, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent/divergent validity, floor/ceiling effects, and interpretability were summarized. Two reviewers independently screened articles and assessed quality taking COSMIN criteria into account. Finally, the review included 17 papers. The TCAQ has been administered to healthy individuals, students, and adult patients, in six languages from nine countries. We found that the TCAQ, and its shorter versions, demonstrate robust reliability and adequate content validity. Of interest is the TCAQ's capacity to predict performance in diverse experimental tasks focused on thought control. The TCAQ unidimensionality has been supported in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Regarding construct validity, the TCAQ is significantly related to a wide range of psychopathological measures of anxiety, worry, depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, etc. However, as only a few of the included studies had a longitudinal design, we are unable to draw firm conclusions about the measure's temporal stability. Moreover, psychometric aspects such as factorial invariance across different samples have not been analyzed. Despite these limitations, based on available psychometric evidence we can recommend using the TCAQ for measuring perceived control of unwanted thoughts.

Retrieval of Emotional Events from Memory

The enhancing effects of emotion on memory have been well documented; emotional events are often more frequently and more vividly remembered than their neutral counterparts. Much of the prior research has emphasized the effects of emotion on encoding processes and the downstream effects of these changes at the time of retrieval. In the current review, we focus specifically on how emotional valence influences retrieval processes, examining how emotion influences the experience of remembering an event at the time of retrieval (retrieval as an end point) as well as how emotion alters the way in which remembering the event affects the underlying memory representation and subsequent retrievals (retrieval as a starting point). We suggest ways in which emotion may augment or interfere with the selective enhancement of particular memory details, using both online and offline processes, and discuss how these effects of emotion may contribute to memory distortions in affective disorders.

Reconsidering unconscious persistence: Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their indirect expression in later thoughts

When we seek to forget unwelcome memories, does the suppressed content still exert an unconscious influence on our thoughts? Although intentionally stopping retrieval of a memory reduces later episodic retention for the suppressed trace, it remains unclear the extent to which suppressed content persists in indirectly influencing mental processes. Here we tested whether inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression alter the influence of a memory's underlying semantic content on later thought. To achieve this, across two experiments, we tested whether suppressing episodic retrieval of to-be-excluded memories reduced the indirect expression of the unwanted content on an apparently unrelated test of problem solving: the remote associates test (RAT). Experiment 1 found that suppressed content was less likely than unsuppressed content to emerge as solutions to RAT problems. Indeed, suppression abolished evidence of conceptual priming, even when participants reported no awareness of the relationship between the memory and the problem solving tasks. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and also found that directing participants to use explicit memory to solve RAT problems eliminated suppression effects. Experiment 2 thus rules out the possibility that suppression effects reflect contamination by covert explicit retrieval strategies. Together, our results indicate that inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression not only disrupt episodic retention, but also reduce the indirect influence of suppressed semantic content during unrelated thought processes. Considered with other recent demonstrations of implicit suppression effects, these findings indicate that historical assumptions about the persisting influence of suppressed thoughts on mental health require closer empirical scrutiny and need to be reconsidered.

The Functions of Prospection - Variations in Health and Disease

Much of human life revolves around anticipating and planning for the future. It has become increasingly clear that this capacity for prospective cognition is a core adaptive function of the mind. Here, we review the role of prospection in two key functional domains: goal-directed behavior and flexible decision-making. We then survey and categorize variations in prospection, with a particular focus on functional impact in clinical psychological conditions and neurological disorders. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research into the functions of prospection and the manner in which these functions can shift toward maladaptive outcomes. In doing so, we consider the conceptualization and measurement of prospection, as well as novel approaches to its augmentation in healthy people and managing its alterations in a clinical context.