title: The effect of negative and positive emotionality on associative memory: an FMRI study.
abstract: In general, emotion is known to enhance memory processes. However, the effect of emotion on associative memory and the underling neural mechanisms remains largely unexplored. In this study, we explored brain activation during an associative memory task that involved the encoding and retrieval of word and face pairs. The word and face pairs consisted of either negative or positive words with neutral faces. Significant hippocampal activation was observed during both encoding and retrieval, regardless of whether the word was negative or positive. Negative and positive emotionality differentially affected the hemodynamic responses to encoding and retrieval in the amygdala, with increased responses during encoding negative word and face pairs. Furthermore, activation of the amygdala during encoding of negative word and neutral face pairs was inversely correlated with subsequent memory retrieval. These findings suggest that activation of the amygdala induced by negative emotion during encoding may disrupt associative memory performance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Division of Frontier Medical Science, Programs for Biomedical Research, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan. goookada@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Go
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Okada
authors.forename: Yasumasa
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Okamoto
authors.forename: Yoshihiko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kunisato
authors.forename: Shiori
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aoyama
authors.forename: Yoshiko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nishiyama
authors.forename: Shinpei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yoshimura
authors.forename: Keiichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Onoda
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Toki
authors.forename: Hidehisa
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yamashita
authors.forename: Shigeto
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yamawaki
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*