title: Prefrontal regions orchestrate suppression of emotional memories via a two-phase process.
abstract: Whether memories can be suppressed has been a controversial issue in psychology and cognitive neuroscience for decades. We found evidence that emotional memories are suppressed via two time-differentiated neural mechanisms: (i) an initial suppression by the right inferior frontal gyrus over regions supporting sensory components of the memory representation (visual cortex, thalamus), followed by (ii) right medial frontal gyrus control over regions supporting multimodal and emotional components of the memory representation (hippocampus, amygdala), both of which are influenced by fronto-polar regions. These results indicate that memory suppression does occur and, at least in nonpsychiatric populations, is under the control of prefrontal regions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. depue@colorado.edu
authors.forename: Brendan E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Depue
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Curran
authors.forename: Marie T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Banich
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D020649:Pulvinar / Q000502:physiology; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D013850:Thinking; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology