Retrieval of emotional memories

Experiential learning as preparation for leadership

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether challenging experiences on development programmes would simulate leadership challenges and therefore stimulate the body’s autonomic nervous system response. The authors also aimed to determine whether increase in autonomic arousal would be related to learning, and/or moderated by personality variables.

Design/methodology/approach

The research used heart rate (HR) monitors to measure HR continuously over a two-day simulated learning experience. This was used to calculate autonomic arousal which was taken to be the difference between resting HR measured during sleep and HR during critical incidents (CIs) (HR). The authors correlated this with self-reports of learning immediately after, and one month after, the programme to assess the impact of autonomic arousal on perceived learning, as well as with variety of psychometric measures.

Findings

The research found significant correlations between (HR) during CIs and perceived learning which were not related to personality type. The research also found a significant correlation between (HR) and learning during a control event for individuals with “approach” personalities.

Research limitations/implications

Whilst a significant result was found, the sample size of 28 was small. The research also did not empirically assess the valence or intensity of the emotions experienced, and used only a self-report measure of learning. Future research should replicate the findings with a larger sample size, attempt to measure these emotional dimensions, as well as obtain perceptions of learning from direct reports and line managers.

Practical implications

The findings from the research help clarify the mechanisms involved in the effectiveness of experiential learning, and contribute to the understanding of the influence of personality type on perceived learning from experiential methodologies. Such understanding has implications for business schools and learning and development professionals, suggesting that development experiences that challenge leaders are likely to result in learning that is longer lasting.

Originality/value

The research extends the literature regarding the value of learning through experience, the role of autonomic arousal on learning, and the impact of negative emotions on cognition. The research makes a unique contribution by exploring the impact of experience on arousal and learning in a simulated learning experience and over time, by demonstrating that simulated experiences induce emotional and physiological responses, and that these experiences are associated with increased learning.

Incidental retrieval of prior emotion mimicry

When observing emotional expressions, similar sensorimotor states are activated in the observer, often resulting in physical mimicry. For example, when observing a smile, the zygomaticus muscles associated with smiling are activated in the observer, and when observing a frown, the corrugator brow muscles. We show that the consistency of an individual’s facial emotion, whether they always frown or smile, can be encoded into memory. When the individuals are viewed at a later time expressing no emotion, muscle mimicry of the prior state can be detected, even when the emotion itself is task irrelevant. The results support simulation accounts of memory, where prior embodiments of other’s states during encoding are reactivated when re-encountering a person.

The neural component-process architecture of endogenously generated emotion

Despite the ubiquity of endogenous emotions and their role in both resilience and pathology, the processes supporting their generation are largely unknown. We propose a neural component process model of endogenous generation of emotion (EGE) and test it in two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments (N = 32/293) where participants generated and regulated positive and negative emotions based on internal representations, usin self-chosen generation methods. EGE activated nodes of salience (SN), default mode (DMN) and frontoparietal control (FPCN) networks. Component processes implemented by these networks were established by investigating their functional associations, activation dynamics and integration. SN activation correlated with subjective affect, with midbrain nodes exclusively distinguishing between positive and negative affect intensity, showing dynamics consistent generation of core affect. Dorsomedial DMN, together with ventral anterior insula, formed a pathway supporting multiple generation methods, with activation dynamics suggesting it is involved in the generation of elaborated experiential representations. SN and DMN both coupled to left frontal FPCN which in turn was associated with both subjective affect and representation formation, consistent with FPCN supporting the executive coordination of the generation process. These results provide a foundation for research into endogenous emotion in normal, pathological and optimal function.

Twelve tips for applying the science of learning to health professions education

Findings from the science of learning have clear implications for those responsible for teaching and curricular design. However, this data has been historically siloed from educators in practice, including those in health professions education. In this article, we aim to bring practical tips from the science of learning to health professions educators. We have chosen to organize the tips into six themes, highlighting strategies for 1) improving the processing of information, 2) promoting effortful learning for greater retention of knowledge over time, 3) applying learned information to new and varied contexts, 4) promoting the development of expertise, 5) harnessing the power of emotion for learning, and 6) teaching and learning in social contexts. We conclude with the importance of attending to metacognition in our learners and ourselves. Health professions education can be strengthened by incorporating these evidence-based techniques.

Association between olfaction and higher cortical functions in Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, and healthy older adults

INTRODUCTION

Neural regions important for smell are proximal and closely connected to cortical areas that have been strongly implicated in higher order functions of value-based decision making and emotional memory. The integrity of these neural regions are affected in aging and neurodegenerative conditions. Two specific predictions follow from these neuroanatomical arrangements-namely, that olfaction would be associated with value-based decision making and with emotional memory.

METHOD

To test these predictions, we measured these different capacities in participants with presumed varying degrees of integrity of the relevant brain structures: specifically, 13 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 8 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 20 healthy older adults. The participants completed detailed tests of olfaction, value-based decision making, emotional memory, and general cognitive ability.

RESULTS

Olfactory functioning was significantly associated with emotional and nonemotional memory. The association was especially strong and consistent for memory recall with olfaction, explaining as much as 10% additional variance over and above general cognition. Olfactory functioning was not strongly or consistently associated with decision making over and above general cognition.

CONCLUSION

Olfaction is a strong predictor of memory recall. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of olfaction and specific cognitive domains known to be affected by aging and implicated in neurodegenerative disease.

Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on Long-Term Memory in Healthy Humans: A Systematic Review

Preclinical Research The neuropeptide oxytocin (Oxt) is implicated in complex emotional and social behaviors and appears to play an important role in learning and memory. Animal studies have shown that the effects of exogenous Oxt on memory vary according to the timing of administration, context, gender, and dose and may improve the memory of social, but not nonsocial stimuli. Oxt is intimately involved in a broad array of neuropsychiatric functions and may therefore be a pharmacological target for several psychiatric disorders. This review summarizes the potential effects of Oxt on long-term memory processes in healthy humans based on a PubMed search over the period 1980-2016. The effects of intranasal Oxt on human memory are controversial and the studies included in this review have applied a variety of learning paradigms, in turn producing variable outcomes. Specifically, data on the long-term memory of nonemotional stimuli found no effect or even worsening in memory, while studies using emotional stimuli showed an improvement of long-term memory performance. In conclusion, this review identified a link between long-term memory performance and exogenous intranasal Oxt in humans, although these results still warrant further confirmation in large, multicenter randomized controlled trials. Drug Dev Res 77 : 479-488, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Emotional valence of stimuli modulates false recognition: Using a modified version of the simplified conjoint recognition paradigm

False recognition results from the interplay of multiple cognitive processes, including verbatim memory, gist memory, phantom recollection, and response bias. In the current study, we modified the simplified Conjoint Recognition (CR) paradigm to investigate the way in which the valence of emotional stimuli affects the cognitive process and behavioral outcome of false recognition. In Study 1, we examined the applicability of the modification to the simplified CR paradigm and model. Twenty-six undergraduate students (13 females, aged 21.00±2.30years) learned and recognized both the large and small categories of photo objects. The applicability of the paradigm and model was confirmed by a fair goodness-of-fit of the model to the observational data and by their competence in detecting the memory differences between the large- and small-category conditions. In Study 2, we recruited another sample of 29 undergraduate students (14 females, aged 22.60±2.74years) to learn and recognize the categories of photo objects that were emotionally provocative. The results showed that negative valence increased false recognition, particularly the rate of false "remember" responses, by facilitating phantom recollection; positive valence did not influence false recognition significantly though enhanced gist processing.

Reactivation of Reward-Related Patterns from Single Past Episodes Supports Memory-Based Decision Making

Rewarding experiences exert a strong influence on later decision making. While decades of neuroscience research have shown how reinforcement gradually shapes preferences, decisions are often influenced by single past experiences. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the influence of single learning episodes. Although recent work has proposed a role for episodes in decision making, it is largely unknown whether and how episodic experiences contribute to value-based decision making and how the values of single episodes are represented in the brain. In multiple behavioral experiments and an fMRI experiment, we tested whether and how rewarding episodes could support later decision making. Participants experienced episodes of high reward or low reward in conjunction with incidental, trial-unique neutral pictures. In a surprise test phase, we found that participants could indeed remember the associated level of reward, as evidenced by accurate source memory for value and preferences to re-engage with rewarded objects. Further, in a separate experiment, we found that high-reward objects shown as primes before a gambling task increased financial risk taking. Neurally, re-exposure to objects in the test phase led to significant reactivation of reward-related patterns. Importantly, individual variability in the strength of reactivation predicted value memory performance. Our results provide a novel demonstration that affect-related neural patterns are reactivated during later experience. Reactivation of value information represents a mechanism by which memory can guide decision making.

Adjunctive selective estrogen receptor modulator increases neural activity in the hippocampus and inferior frontal gyrus during emotional face recognition in schizophrenia

Estrogen has been implicated in the development and course of schizophrenia with most evidence suggesting a neuroprotective effect. Treatment with raloxifene, a selective estrogen receptor modulator, can reduce symptom severity, improve cognition and normalize brain activity during learning in schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia are especially impaired in the identification of negative facial emotions. The present study was designed to determine the extent to which adjunctive raloxifene treatment would alter abnormal neural activity during angry facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Twenty people with schizophrenia (12 men, 8 women) participated in a 13-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial of adjunctive raloxifene treatment (120 mg per day orally) and performed a facial emotion recognition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging after each treatment phase. Two-sample t-tests in regions of interest selected a priori were performed to assess activation differences between raloxifene and placebo conditions during the recognition of angry faces. Adjunctive raloxifene significantly increased activation in the right hippocampus and left inferior frontal gyrus compared with the placebo condition (family-wise error, P<0.05). There was no significant difference in performance accuracy or reaction time between active and placebo conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence suggesting that adjunctive raloxifene treatment changes neural activity in brain regions associated with facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. These findings support the hypothesis that estrogen plays a modifying role in schizophrenia and shows that adjunctive raloxifene treatment may reverse abnormal neural activity during facial emotion recognition, which is relevant to impaired social functioning in men and women with schizophrenia.

Future-Oriented Thought Patterns Associated With Anxiety and Depression in Later Life: The Intriguing Prospects of Prospection

Anxiety and mood disorders in later life are the focus of an increasing amount of intervention research, however basic mechanisms and paradigms explaining etiology and maintenance warrant further exploration. Research on future-oriented thought patterns associated with anxiety and depression in this age group may prove useful, as these disorders are both characterized by a tendency to generate and fixate on threat-related future scenarios that may or may not materialize. Additionally, depression is associated with a reduced expectancy of positive future events. In this paper, we review the literature relevant to future thinking in anxiety and depression in older adults. We focus on the mental construction and anticipation of negative future events, and their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. We then consider clinical and research implications of anxious and depressive future-oriented thought patterns for older adults. We believe that more research investigating future-oriented thought patterns associated with emotional disorders in later life could improve conceptualization, measurement, and perhaps potential treatments for late-life anxiety and depression.

'Imagined guilt' vs 'recollected guilt': implications for fMRI

Guilt is thought to maintain social harmony by motivating reparation. This study compared two methodologies commonly used to identify the neural correlates of guilt. The first, imagined guilt, requires participants to read hypothetical scenarios and then imagine themselves as the protagonist. The second, recollected guilt, requires participants to reflect on times they personally experienced guilt. In the fMRI scanner, participants were presented with guilt/neutral memories and guilt/neutral hypothetical scenarios. Contrasts confirmed a priori predictions that guilt memories, relative to guilt scenarios, were associated with significantly greater activity in regions associated with affect [anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), Caudate, Insula, orbital frontal cortex (OFC)] and social cognition [temporal pole (TP), precuneus). Similarly, results indicated that guilt memories, relative to neutral memories, were also associated with greater activity in affective (ACC, amygdala, Insula, OFC) and social cognition (mPFC, TP, precuneus, temporo-parietal junction) regions. There were no significant differences between guilt hypothetical scenarios and neutral hypothetical scenarios in either affective or social cognition regions. The importance of distinguishing between different guilt inductions inside the scanner is discussed. We offer explanations of our results and discuss ideas for future research.

In vivo measurements of limbic glutamate and GABA concentrations in epileptic patients during affective and cognitive tasks: A microdialysis study

Limbic system structures such as the amygdala (AMG) and the hippocampus (HIPP) are involved in affective and cognitive processing. However, because of the limitations in noninvasive technology, absolute concentrations of the neurotransmitters underlying limbic system engagement are not known. Here, we report changes in the concentrations of the neurotransmitters glutamate (Glu) and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the HIPP and the AMG of patients with nonlesional temporal lobe epilepsy undergoing surgery for intracranial subdural and depth electrode implantation. We utilized an in-vivo microdialysis technique while subjects were engaged in cognitive tasks with or without emotional content. The performance of an emotion learning task (EmoLearn) was associated with a significant increase in the concentration of glutamate in the HIPP when images with high valence content were processed, as compared to its concentration while processing images with low valence. In addition, significantly decreased levels of glutamate were found in the AMG when images with predominantly low valence content were processed, as compared to its concentration at baseline. The processing of face stimuli with anger/fear content (FaceMatch task) was accompanied with significantly decreased concentrations of GABA in the AMG and HIPP compared to its levels at the baseline. The processing of shapes on the other hand was accompanied with a significantly decreased concentration of the glutamate in the AMG as well as in the HIPP compared to the baseline. Finally, the performance of a nondeclarative memory task (weather prediction task-WPT) was associated with relatively large and opposite changes in the GABA levels compared to the baseline in the AMG (decrease) and the HIPP (increase). These data are relevant for showing an involvement of the amygdala and the hippocampus in emotional processing and provide additional neurochemical clues towards a more refined model of the functional circuitry of the human limbic system.

Memory Retrieval in Mice and Men

Retrieval, the use of learned information, was until recently mostly terra incognita in the neurobiology of memory, owing to shortage of research methods with the spatiotemporal resolution required to identify and dissect fast reactivation or reconstruction of complex memories in the mammalian brain. The development of novel paradigms, model systems, and new tools in molecular genetics, electrophysiology, optogenetics, in situ microscopy, and functional imaging, have contributed markedly in recent years to our ability to investigate brain mechanisms of retrieval. We review selected developments in the study of explicit retrieval in the rodent and human brain. The picture that emerges is that retrieval involves coordinated fast interplay of sparse and distributed corticohippocampal and neocortical networks that may permit permutational binding of representational elements to yield specific representations. These representations are driven largely by the activity patterns shaped during encoding, but are malleable, subject to the influence of time and interaction of the existing memory with novel information.

No evidence for differential dose effects of hydrocortisone on intrusive memories in female patients with complex post-traumatic stress disorder--a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study

BACKGROUND

Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by intrusive traumatic memories. Presently, a controversial debate is ongoing regarding whether reduced cortisol secretion in post-traumatic stress disorder promotes an automatic retrieval of trauma-associated memories. Hence, a pharmacological elevation of cortisol was proposed to decrease post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, particularly intrusions. The present study investigated the impact of two different doses of hydrocortisone on automatic memory retrieval using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study in 30 inpatients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

METHODS

All participants were female and received various psychotropic medications. They were randomly assigned to one of two groups within a crossover design: they received either 1 week placebo followed by 1 week hydrocortisone 10/d, followed by 1 week placebo, followed by hydrocortisone 30 mg/d (15 participants) or 1 week hydrocortisone 30 mg/d, followed by 1 week placebo, followed by 1 week hydrocortisone 10 mg/d, followed by 1 week placebo (15 participants). The outcome measures were the frequency and the intensity of intrusions, the overall symptomatology of post-traumatic stress disorder and the general psychopathology.

RESULTS

We did not find any differences in the frequency and the intensity of post-traumatic stress disorder-related intrusions between the 10 mg hydrocortisone, the 30 mg hydrocortisone and the placebo condition. All effect sizes for the hydrocortisone condition vs. placebo were very small. Additionally, the overall symptomatology of post-traumatic stress disorder and the general psychopathology did not differ between the hydrocortisone therapies and placebo.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results do not show any effect of the hydrocortisone administration on intrusions in complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Emotion impairs extrinsic source memory--An ERP study

Substantial advancements in understanding emotional modulation of item memory notwithstanding, controversies remain as to how emotion influences source memory. Using an emotional extrinsic source memory paradigm combined with remember/know judgments and two key event-related potentials (ERPs)-the FN400 (a frontal potential at 300-500 ms related to familiarity) and the LPC (a later parietal potential at 500-700 ms related to recollection), our research investigated the impact of emotion on extrinsic source memory and the underlying processes. We varied a semantic prompt (either "people" or "scene") preceding a study item to manipulate the extrinsic source. Behavioral data indicated a significant effect of emotion on "remember" responses to extrinsic source details, suggesting impaired recollection-based source memory in emotional (both positive and negative) relative to neutral conditions. In parallel, differential FN400 and LPC amplitudes (correctly remembered - incorrectly remembered sources) revealed emotion-related interference, suggesting impaired familiarity and recollection memory of extrinsic sources associated with positive or negative items. These findings thus lend support to the notion of emotion-induced memory trade off: while enhancing memory of central items and intrinsic/integral source details, emotion nevertheless disrupts memory of peripheral contextual details, potentially impairing both familiarity and recollection. Importantly, that positive and negative items result in comparable memory impairment suggests that arousal (vs. affective valence) plays a critical role in modulating dynamic interactions among automatic and elaborate processes involved in memory.

The Number of Ratings Needed for Valid Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials: Replication and Extension

OBJECTIVES

To provide additional empirical findings regarding the number of pain ratings needed to obtain valid measures for assessing outcomes in pain clinical trials.

DESIGN

Secondary analyses of data from a clinical study examining the effects of psychological treatments on pain. Eleven adults with multiple sclerosis and chronic pain reported on four domains of pain intensity (current pain and 24-hour recalled worst, least, and average pain) on four occasions before and after receiving 16 sessions of psychological pain treatments. We evaluated the reliability and validity of four single ratings and 16 different composite scores.

RESULTS

Many of the single pain ratings were inadequately reliable while almost all of the composite scores, including the scores created from two ratings, evidenced adequate to excellent reliability. There was a noticeable increase in validity (ability to detect treatment effects) as the number of ratings used increased from one to two. However, there was little change in the validity as the number of items used to create composite scores increased from 2 to 3 or more. The findings also indicated that the scores assessing recalled worst pain were more valid than the scores assessing any of the other pain intensity domains.

CONCLUSIONS

Composite pain intensity scores created from two individual ratings of recalled pain appear to be adequately valid for detecting treatment effects. Moreover, the findings indicate that the selection of the pain intensity domain to use as a primary outcome variable may play a more important role than increasing reliability by obtaining more assessments; specifically, ratings of recalled worst pain may be more valid for detecting treatment effects than ratings of average pain.

The neural correlates of memory for a life-threatening event: An fMRI study of passengers from flight AT236

We investigated the neural correlates of remote traumatic reexperiencing in survivors of a life-threatening incident: the near crash of Air Transat (AT) Flight 236. Survivors' brain activity was monitored during video-cued recollection of the AT disaster, September 11^th, 2001 (9/11), and a comparatively non-emotional (neutral) event. Passengers showed a robust memory enhancement effect for the AT incident relative to the 9/11 and neutral events. This traumatic memory enhancement was associated with activation in the amygdala, medial temporal lobe, anterior and posterior midline, and visual cortex in passengers. This brain-behavior relationship also held in relation to 9/11, which had elevated significance for passengers given its temporal proximity to the AT disaster. This pattern was not observed in a comparison group of non-traumatized individuals who were also scanned. These findings suggest that remote, traumatic memory is mediated by amygdalar activity, which likely enhances vividness via influences on hippocampal and ventral visual systems.

Depression and prospection

OBJECTIVES

Prospection, the mental representation of possible futures, is usually adaptive. When it goes awry, however, it disrupts emotion and motivation. A negative view of the future is typically seen as one symptom of depression, but we suggest that such negative prospection is the core causal element of depression. Here, we describe the empirical evidence supporting this framework, and we explore the implications for clinical interventions.

METHODS

We integrate several literatures: Using the database PsycInfo, we retrieved empirical studies with the keywords prospection, prediction, expectation, pessimism, mental simulation, future-thinking, future-directed thinking, foresight, and/or mental time travel, in conjunction with depression, depressed, or depressive.

RESULTS

Three kinds of faulty prospection, taken together, could drive depression: Poor generation of possible futures, poor evaluation of possible futures, and negative beliefs about the future. Depressed mood and poor functioning, in turn, may maintain faulty prospection and feed a vicious cycle. Future-oriented treatment strategies drawn from cognitive-behavioural therapy help to fix poor prospection, and they deserve to be developed further.

CONCLUSIONS

Prospection-based techniques may lead to transdiagnostic treatment strategies for depression and other disorders.

Memory detection using fMRI - does the encoding context matter?

Recent research revealed that the presentation of crime related details during the Concealed Information Test (CIT) reliably activates a network of bilateral inferior frontal, right medial frontal and right temporal-parietal brain regions. However, the ecological validity of these findings as well as the influence of the encoding context are still unclear. To tackle these questions, three different groups of subjects participated in the current study. Two groups of guilty subjects encoded critical details either only by planning (guilty intention group) or by really enacting (guilty action group) a complex, realistic mock crime. In addition, a group of informed innocent subjects encoded half of the relevant details in a neutral context. Univariate analyses showed robust activation differences between known relevant compared to neutral details in the previously identified ventral frontal-parietal network with no differences between experimental groups. Moreover, validity estimates for average changes in neural activity were similar between groups when focusing on the known details and did not differ substantially from the validity of electrodermal recordings. Additional multivariate analyses provided evidence for differential patterns of activity in the ventral fronto-parietal network between the guilty action and the informed innocent group and yielded higher validity coefficients for the detection of crime related knowledge when relying on whole brain data. Together, these findings demonstrate that an fMRI-based CIT enables the accurate detection of concealed crime related memories, largely independent of encoding context. On the one hand, this indicates that even persons who planned a (mock) crime could be validly identified as having specific crime related knowledge. On the other hand, innocents with such knowledge have a high risk of failing the test, at least when considering univariate changes of neural activation.

Impaired emotional autobiographical memory associated with right amygdalar-hippocampal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease patients

We studied the influence of emotions on autobiographical memory (AbM) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), characteristically triggering atrophy in the hippocampus and the amygdala, two crucial structures sustaining memory and emotional processing. Our first aim was to analyze the influence of emotion on AbM in AD patients, on both the proportion and the specificity of emotional memories. Additionally, we sought to determine the relationship of emotional AbM to amygdalar-hippocampal volumes. Eighteen prodromal to mild AD patients and 18 age-matched healthy controls were included. We obtained 30 autobiographical memories per participant using the modified Crovitz test (MCT). Analyses were performed on global scores, rates and specificity scores of the emotional vs. neutral categories of memories. Amygdalar-hippocampal volumes were extracted from 3D T1-weighted MRI scans and tested for correlations with behavioral data. Overall, AD patients displayed a deficit in emotional AbMs as they elicited less emotional memories than the controls, however, the specificity of those memories was preserved. The deficit likely implied retrieval or storage as it was extended in time and without reminiscence bump effect. Global scores and rates of emotional memories, but not the specificity scores, were correlated to right amygdalar and hippocampal volumes, indicating that atrophy in these structures has a central role in the deficit observed. Conversely, emotional memories were more specific than neutral memories in both groups, reflecting an enhancement effect of emotion that could be supported by other brain regions that are spared during the early stages of the disease.

ADRA2B genotype differentially modulates stress-induced neural activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during emotional memory retrieval

RATIONALE

Noradrenaline interacts with stress hormones in the amygdala and hippocampus to enhance emotional memory consolidation, but the noradrenergic-glucocorticoid interaction at retrieval, where stress impairs memory, is less understood.

OBJECTIVES

We used a genetic neuroimaging approach to investigate whether a genetic variation of the noradrenergic system impacts stress-induced neural activity in amygdala and hippocampus during recognition of emotional memory.

METHODS

This study is based on genotype-dependent reanalysis of data from our previous publication (Li et al. Brain Imaging Behav 2014). Twenty-two healthy male volunteers were genotyped for the ADRA2B gene encoding the α2B-adrenergic receptor. Ten deletion carriers and 12 noncarriers performed an emotional face recognition task, while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. During encoding, 50 fearful and 50 neutral faces were presented. One hour later, they underwent either an acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control procedure which was followed immediately by the retrieval session, where participants had to discriminate between 100 old and 50 new faces.

RESULTS

A genotype-dependent modulation of neural activity at retrieval was found in the bilateral amygdala and right hippocampus. Deletion carriers showed decreased neural activity in the amygdala when recognizing emotional faces in control condition and increased amygdala activity under stress. Noncarriers showed no differences in emotional modulated amygdala activation under stress or control. Instead, stress-induced increases during recognition of emotional faces were present in the right hippocampus.

CONCLUSION

The genotype-dependent effects of acute stress on neural activity in amygdala and hippocampus provide evidence for noradrenergic-glucocorticoid interaction in emotional memory retrieval.

Interference with the reconsolidation of trauma-related memories in adults

BACKGROUND

Reactivated memories go through a process of reconsolidation, during which they are malleable and susceptible to modification. Strategies targeting the interruption of memory reconsolidation hold the promise of weakening fear memories that underlie traumatic stress disorders. Although many studies have examined the efficacy of reconsolidation interference strategies with fear memories developed in a laboratory, very few have examined this with trauma-related episodic memories. This study aims to examine whether new learning can interfere with the reconsolidation of trauma-related episodic memories, when the affective content of the new learning and memory match.

METHODS

Boston-area young adults (n = 94) wrote about negative autobiographical memories; specifically, their personal memories of the Boston Marathon bombings. Following reactivation, participants were randomized to receive interference with a negative, positive, neutral, or no story. One week later, participants were tested for memory recall.

RESULTS

Comparisons between conditions with relevant covariates revealed a significant interfering effect for a negative story, relative to no story, on recall (P < .05, 95% CI [-3.90, -0.04]), d = 0.62). In contrast, the neutral and positive story, relative to no story, resulted in smaller and nonsignificant effects.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings indicate that reconsolidation interference effects can be achieved for trauma-related episodic memories and the emotional valence of interference material may be an important contextual factor in achieving these effects. This study provides support for further research translating memory reconsolidation findings into treatments for traumatic stress disorders.

Emotional evaluation and memory in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) affects emotional evaluation, but less is known regarding the patients' ability to remember emotional stimuli. Here, bvFTD patients and age-matched controls studied positive, negative, and neutral pictures followed by a recognition memory test. Compared to controls, bvFTD patients showed a reduction in emotional evaluation of negative scenes, but not of positive or neutral scenes. Additionally, the patients showed an overall reduction in recognition memory accuracy, due to impaired recollection in the face of relatively preserved familiarity. These results show that bvFTD reduces the emotional evaluation of negative scenes and impairs overall recognition memory accuracy and recollection.

Remoteness Modulates the Effects of Emotional Valence on the Neural Network of Autobiographical Memory in Older Females

To better understand the effects of emotional valence on autobiographical memory (AM), the present study compared behavioral performance and neural activation in positive and negative AMs at different levels of remoteness (the time-interval between encoding and retrieving) in a sample of Chinese older females. The behavioral results revealed that older females held a positivity bias in emotional AM in the form of an obvious trend of higher level of vividness when retrieving positive AMs compared with negative AMs. At the neural level, a de-lateralized neural network, covering the core AM system and the affect processing system, was found to be associated with emotional AM. Within the network, increased activation of a prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate cortex (PFC/ACC) control system was found when processing negative recent AMs compared with positive recent AMs; increased activation of the somatosensory area was found with positive remote AMs compared with negative remote AMs. On the basis of these results, we suggest that the positivity bias of the older adults in recent AMs may be due to the use of an emotion regulation or control system (involving PFC/ACC) against negative AMs; in contrast, for remote AMs, the positivity bias may be due to better access to the positive remote memory details than the negative remote memory details.

Adult age-differences in subjective impression of emotional faces are reflected in emotion-related attention and memory tasks

Although younger and older adults appear to attend to and remember emotional faces differently, less is known about age-related differences in the subjective emotional impression (arousal, potency, and valence) of emotional faces and how these differences, in turn, are reflected in age differences in various emotional tasks. In the current study, we used the same facial emotional stimuli (angry and happy faces) in four tasks: emotional rating, attention, categorical perception, and visual short-term memory (VSTM). The aim of this study was to investigate effects of age on the subjective emotional impression of angry and happy faces and to examine whether any age differences were mirrored in measures of emotional behavior (attention, categorical perception, and memory). In addition, regression analyses were used to further study impression-behavior associations. Forty younger adults (range 20-30 years) and thirty-nine older adults (range 65-75 years) participated in the experiment. The emotional rating task showed that older adults perceived less arousal, potency, and valence than younger adults and that the difference was more pronounced for angry than happy faces. Similarly, the results of the attention and memory tasks demonstrated interaction effects between emotion and age, and age differences on these measures were larger for angry than for happy faces. Regression analyses confirmed that in both age groups, higher potency ratings predicted both visual search and VSTM efficiency. Future studies should consider the possibility that age differences in the subjective emotional impression of facial emotional stimuli may explain age differences in attention to and memory of such stimuli.

The role of emotion on the recall of central and peripheral information from script-based text

In three experiments, script-based stories were used to provide thematic emotion. Consistent with past research expressing emotion thematically, emotion aided recall of both central and peripheral information. However, emotion had to be directly associated with the central or peripheral information, and emotion only facilitated memory for peripheral information when peripheral information alone was associated with the emotion. Emotion did not aid overall recall of stories. Positive and negative emotions were generally better recalled when they were incongruent with the information they were associated with, such as a positive emotion associated with an interruptive action. These results provide evidence that thematically expressed, low arousal emotion can have facilitative effects on memory. Implications for the role of emotion on memory are discussed.

Amphetamine fails to alter cued recollection of emotional images: study of encoding, retrieval, and state-dependency

Stimulant drugs facilitate both encoding and retrieval of salient information in laboratory animals, but less is known about their effects on memory for emotionally salient visual images in humans. The current study investigated dextroamphetamine (AMP) effects on memory for emotional pictures in healthy humans, by administering the drug only at encoding, only at retrieval, or at both encoding and retrieval. During the encoding session, all participants viewed standardized positive, neutral, and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). 48 hours later they attended a retrieval session testing their cued recollection of these stimuli. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (N = 20 each): condition AP (20 mg AMP at encoding and placebo (PL) at retrieval); condition PA (PL at encoding and AMP at retrieval); condition AA (AMP at encoding and retrieval); or condition PP (PL at encoding and retrieval). Amphetamine produced its expected effects on physiological and subjective measures, and negative pictures were recollected more frequently than neutral pictures. However, contrary to hypotheses, AMP did not affect recollection for positive, negative, or neutral stimuli, whether it was administered at encoding, retrieval, or at both encoding and retrieval. Moreover, recollection accuracy was not state-dependent. Considered in light of other recent drug studies in humans, this study highlights the sensitivity of drug effects to memory testing conditions and suggests future strategies for translating preclinical findings to human behavioral laboratories.

Prior perceptual processing enhances the effect of emotional arousal on the neural correlates of memory retrieval

A fundamental idea in memory research is that items are more likely to be remembered if encoded with a semantic, rather than perceptual, processing strategy. Interestingly, this effect has been shown to reverse for emotionally arousing materials, such that perceptual processing enhances memory for emotional information or events. The current fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms of this effect by testing how neural activations during emotional memory retrieval are influenced by the prior encoding strategy. Participants incidentally encoded emotional and neutral pictures under instructions to attend to either semantic or perceptual properties of each picture. Recognition memory was tested 2 days later. fMRI analyses yielded three main findings. First, right amygdalar activity associated with emotional memory strength was enhanced by prior perceptual processing. Second, prior perceptual processing of emotional pictures produced a stronger effect on recollection- than familiarity-related activations in the right amygdala and left hippocampus. Finally, prior perceptual processing enhanced amygdalar connectivity with regions strongly associated with retrieval success, including hippocampal/parahippocampal regions, visual cortex, and ventral parietal cortex. Taken together, the results specify how encoding orientations yield alterations in brain systems that retrieve emotional memories.

Aberrant interference of auditory negative words on attention in patients with schizophrenia

Previous research suggests that deficits in attention-emotion interaction are implicated in schizophrenia symptoms. Although disruption in auditory processing is crucial in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, deficits in interaction between emotional processing of auditorily presented language stimuli and auditory attention have not yet been clarified. To address this issue, the current study used a dichotic listening task to examine 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 age-, sex-, parental socioeconomic background-, handedness-, dexterous ear-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls. The participants completed a word recognition task on the attended side in which a word with emotionally valenced content (negative/positive/neutral) was presented to one ear and a different neutral word was presented to the other ear. Participants selectively attended to either ear. In the control subjects, presentation of negative but not positive word stimuli provoked a significantly prolonged reaction time compared with presentation of neutral word stimuli. This interference effect for negative words existed whether or not subjects directed attention to the negative words. This interference effect was significantly smaller in the patients with schizophrenia than in the healthy controls. Furthermore, the smaller interference effect was significantly correlated with severe positive symptoms and delusional behavior in the patients with schizophrenia. The present findings suggest that aberrant interaction between semantic processing of negative emotional content and auditory attention plays a role in production of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (224 words).

Trauma, dream, and psychic change in psychoanalyses: a dialog between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences

To many psychoanalysts dreams are a central source of knowledge of the unconscious-the specific research object of psychoanalysis. The dialog with the neurosciences, devoted to the testing of hypotheses on human behavior and neurophysiology with objective methods, has added to psychoanalytic conceptualizations on emotion, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma. To psychoanalysts as well as neuroscientists, the neurological basis of psychic functioning, particularly concerning trauma, is of special interest. In this article, an attempt is made to bridge the gap between psychoanalytic findings and neuroscientific findings on trauma. We then attempt to merge both approaches in one experimental study devoted to the investigation of the neurophysiological changes (fMRI) associated with psychoanalytic treatment in chronically depressed patients. We also report on an attempt to quantify psychoanalysis-induced transformation in the manifest content of dreams. To do so, we used two independent methods. First, dreams reported during the cure of chronic depressed analysands were assessed by the treating psychoanalyst. Second, dreams reported in an experimental context were analyzed by an independent evaluator using a standardized method to quantify changes in dream content (Moser method). Single cases are presented. Preliminary results suggest that psychoanalysis-induced transformation can be assessed in an objective way.

The future is here: a review of foresight systems in anxiety and depression

Cognitive models of anxiety and depression have long suggested a central role for future-oriented thinking in these disorders. Experimental studies suggest that anxiety and depression are characterised by distinct future-oriented thinking profiles, and that these profiles are markedly different from those of asymptomatic adults. In this paper, we review these profiles and propose two explanatory models marked by two different neurocognitive systems. The Reconstructive Memory Model emphasises a role for emotionally driven learning and retrieval in episodic foresight (i.e., the construction of future-oriented scenarios), and the Valuation Model proposes that an overweighing of risk and uncertainty estimates can be invoked to explain the future-oriented thought patterns. We consider the effectiveness of interventions aimed at altering such thought patterns. We suggest that future research aimed at elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of future-oriented thinking in anxiety and depression can play an important role in advancing development of effective biological and psychosocial interventions for these disorders.

Effects of emotion and emotional valence on the neural correlates of episodic memory search and elaboration

Successful retrieval of an event includes an initial search phase in which the information is accessed and a subsequent elaboration phase in which an individual expands on event details. Traditionally, functional neuroimaging studies examining episodic memory retrieval either have not made a distinction between these two phases or have focused on the initial search process. The current study used an extended retrieval trial to compare the neural correlates of search and elaboration and to examine the effects of emotion on each phase. Before scanning, participants encoded positive, negative, and neutral images paired with neutral titles. After a 30-min delay, participants engaged in a scanned recognition task in which they viewed the neutral titles and indicated whether the title had been presented with an image during the study phase. Retrieval was divided into an initial memory search and a subsequent 5-sec elaboration phase. The current study identified neural differences between the search and elaboration phases, with search being associated with widespread bilateral activations across the entire cortex and elaboration primarily being associated with increased activity in the medial pFC. The emotionality of the retrieval target was more influential during search relative to elaboration. However, valence influenced when the effect of emotion was greatest, with search engaging many more regions for positive events than negative ones, but elaboration engaging the dorsomedial pFC more for negative events than positive events.