Emotional Memory Part 2 Flashcards
Why do we remember emotional events better than
neutral ones?
Emotion affects:
○ Encoding: how we “take in” information(attention)
○ Consolidation:how we lay down permanent/semi-permanent records of that information
○ Retrieval: how we retrieve information
Physiological Response: Arousal (fight-or-flight response):
a collection of bodily responses that prepare the body to face a threat
- blood presure increase
- increse respiration
- blood flow increase
- decrese digestion
- descrese immune system
- sexual arosal decrese
- etc
Physiological Response: Autonomic Arousal
● The physiological components of arousal are mediated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS)
● When there is a challenge or threat, the adrenal glands release stress hormones
○ Major stress hormones include epinephrine (also called adrenaline) and glucocorticoids
(cortisol in humans and corticosterone in non-human animals)
○ these hormones can strengthen memory encoding (may depend on how much is released)
Emotional Learning in the Brain: A hub region
● Amygdala: an almond-shaped region, critical for:
○ Learning and expressing emotion
○ The emotional modulation of memory formatio
○ Yet, it’s role in emotional learning and memory is debated.
■ Some argue that a better characterization is “salience”(something that it stands out in our mind) detector
Where Context Is Learned
● The hippocampus projects to the amygdala, a region that works in tandem with the amygdala to
trigger emotional responses and encode emotional memories
● The two regions might play different roles but scientists are still working this out!
Lesions of the amygdala disrupt emotional memory
○ Human patients with bilateral amygdala damage often show deficits in learning emotional responses
■ Here a “CS” (conditioned stimulus) could be a tone that was paired with a shock
in rats:
- freezing
- rats with hippocampsu demage show intact responde - they freez
- but if they have amygdala demage they show no condition response - no freezing
in humans:
- SCR magnitude (ex:sweeting,fliching)
- humans with hippocampsu demage show intact responde - they sweat
- but if they have amygdala demage they show no condition response - no sweating
- the hippocampsue lesions once asked if their remenber the tone - they dont have episodic memory to the CS event eve though they show the cs response
hippocampsue and amygdala show different responses
for both rats and humans the amygdala demages their emotional response the hippocampsue not as much
