Emotional memory persists longer than event memory.
The interaction between amygdala-driven and hippocampus-driven activities is expected to explain why emotion enhances episodic memory recognition. However, overwhelming behavioral evidence regarding the emotion-induced enhancement of immediate and delayed episodic memory recognition has not been obtained in humans. We found that the recognition performance for event memory differs from that for emotional memory. Although event recognition deteriorated equally for episodes that were or were not emotionally salient, emotional recognition remained high for only stimuli related to emotional episodes. Recognition performance pertaining to delayed emotional memory is an accurate predictor of the context of past episodes.
Kuriyama
Kenichi
K
Department of Adult Mental Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Kodaira, Tokyo 187-8502, Japan. kenichik@ncnp.go.jp
Soshi
Takahiro
T
Fujii
Takeshi
T
Kim
Yoshiharu
Y
D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000523:psychology; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009040:Motion Pictures; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult