Emotional Memory

Impaired working memory and normal sustained attention in borderline personality disorder

by Sophia Frangou

Lazzaretti M, Morandotti N, Sala M, Isola M, Frangou S, De Vidovich G, Marraffini E, Gambini F, Barale F, Zappoli F, Caverzasi E, Brambilla P

Acta Neuropsychiatrica 2012: no. doi:10.1111/j.1601-5215.2011.00630.x

Objective: Although reports in the literature describe deficits in working memory in borderline personality disorder... more Objective: Although reports in the literature describe deficits in working memory in borderline personality disorder (BPD), the evidence is limited and inconsistent. The aim of this study was to evaluate further this cognitive dimension and its clinical correlates in BPD.

Method: We compared the performance of 15 BPD patients to 1:1 matched healthy controls on verbal working memory as determined by the sequential letter N-back test and sustained attention as measured using the continuous performance test (CPT).

Results: BPD patients performed significantly worse on the N-back test compared to healthy controls (p < 0.05), but not on the CPT. The N-back deficit was more pronounced and significant in the 3-back condition and inversely correlated with impulsivity.

Conclusions: These results suggest the presence of working memory deficits in BPD that may be linked to greater impulsivity and sustained by impairment in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

The Limits of Arousal's Memory Impairing Effects on Nearby Information Mara Mather and Marissa Gorlick University of Southern California Kathryn Nesmith …

by Mara Mather

Neurobiology in the Consulting Room: An Interview with Margaret Wilkinson

by Daniela Sieff

Alexithymia factors and memory performances for neutral and emotional words

by Nicolas Vermeulen

Overnight emotional adaptation to negative stimuli is altered by REM sleep deprivation and is correlated with intervening dream emotions (2009)

by Tore Nielsen

Effects of semantic relatedness on recall of stimuli preceding emotional oddballs

by Ryan Smith

Semantic and episodic memory networks function as highly interconnected systems, both relying on the... more Semantic and episodic memory networks function as highly interconnected systems, both relying on the hippocampal/medial temporal lobe complex (HC/MTL). Episodic memory encoding triggers the retrieval of semantic information, serving to incorporate contextual relationships between the newly acquired memory and existing semantic representations. While emotional material augments episodic memory encoding at the time of stimulus presentation, interactions between emotion and semantic memory that contribute to subsequent episodic recall are not well understood. Using a modified oddball task, we examined the modulatory effects of negative emotion on semantic interactions with episodic memory by measuring the free-recall of serially presented neutral or negative words varying in semantic relatedness. We found increased free-recall for words related to and preceding emotionally negative oddballs, suggesting that negative emotion can indirectly facilitate episodic free-recall by enhancing semantic contributions during encoding. Our findings demonstrate the ability of emotion and semantic memory to interact to mutually enhance free-recall.

Forgetting the Unforgettable Through Conversation

by Alin Coman

Earwitness Memory: Effects of Facial Concealment on the Face Overshadowing Effect

by Keeley Moore

International Journal of Advance Science and Technology. Vol 33, 2011.

The face overshadowing effect (FOE) has been noted in cases where recognition of voices is impaired if they are... more The face overshadowing effect (FOE) has been noted in cases where recognition of voices is impaired if they are presented simultaneous to a face at encoding. The current study investigated the effect of facial concealment  (with and without wearing a balaclava) and emotionality of vocal tone on the face overshadowing effect in voice identification. It was predicted that the FOE would be reduced in the case of presentation of a concealed face along with voices, as the lack of facial feature information would result in greater attention being paid to the voice. It was further anticipated that angry voices would attract more attention and result in better voice recognition and reductions in the FOE than neutral voices, as hostile voices represent a level of threat that captures attention analogous to the weapon focus effect in eyewitness memory. Results replicated the FOE in a voice plus face video presentation but, contrary to  expectations; a concealed face presentation also
demonstrated a FOE, with highest accuracy of voice identification in the voice only condition. Angry vocal tone had a slight tendency to result in better recognition of voices across groups and somewhat improve performance in the visual conditions. It was concluded that voice identification is as fallible and prone to error as eyewitness identification but that conditions where the voice is made salient and visual information is absent result in higher accuracy. Implications for the criminal justice system are discussed.

Memory for Emotional Pictures in Patients with Alzheimer's Dementia: Comparing Picture-Location Binding and Subsequent Recognition

by Heiko C. Bergmann

Emotional content typically facilitates subsequent memory, known as the emotional enhancement effect. We investigated... more Emotional content typically facilitates subsequent memory, known as the emotional enhancement effect. We investigated whether emotional content facilitates spatial and item memory in patients with Alzheimer's dementia (AD). Twenty-three AD patients, twenty-three healthy elderly, and twenty-three young adults performed a picture relocation task and a delayed recognition task with positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. AD patients showed a benefit in immediate spatial memory for positive pictures, while healthy young and older participants did not benefit from emotional content. No emotional enhancement effects on delayed item recognition were seen. We conclude that AD patients may have a memory bias for positive information in spatial memory. Discrepancies between our findings and earlier studies are discussed.

Genetic differences in emotionally enhanced memory

by Rebecca Todd

Todd, R. M., Palombo, D., Levine, B., Anderson, A. K. (2011). Neuropsychologia.

The neurogenetics of remembering emotions past

by Rebecca Todd

Todd, R. M. & Anderson, A. K. (2009). PNAS.

Reconciling findings of emotion-induced enhancement and impairment of preceding items.

by Mara Mather

A large body of work reveals that people remember emotionally arousing information better than neutral information.... more A large body of work reveals that people remember emotionally arousing information better than neutral information. However, previous research reveals contradictory effects of emotional events on memory for neutral events that precede or follow them: in some studies emotionally arousing items impair memory for immediately preceding or following items and in others arousing items enhance memory for preceding items. By demonstrating both emotion-induced enhancement and impairment, Experiments 1 and 2 clarified the conditions under which these effects are likely to occur. The results suggest that emotion-induced enhancement is most likely to occur for neutral items that: (1) precede (and so are poised to predict the onset of) emotionally arousing items, (2) have high attentional weights at encoding, and (3) are tested after a delay period of a week rather than within the same experiment session. In contrast, emotion-induced impairment is most likely to occur for neutral items near the onset of emotional arousal that are overshadowed by highly activated competing items during encoding.

Arousal-biased competition in perception and memory

by Mara Mather

Our everyday surroundings besiege us with information. The battle is for a share of our limited attention and memory,... more Our everyday surroundings besiege us with information. The battle is for a share of our limited attention and memory, with the brain selecting the winners and discarding the losers. Previous research shows that both bottom-up and top-down factors bias competition in favor of high priority stimuli. We propose that arousal during an event increases this bias both in perception and in long-term memory of the event. Arousal-biased competition theory provides specific predictions about when arousal will enhance and when it will impair memory for events, accounting for some puzzling contradictions in the emotional memory literature.