Emotions and Memory Flashcards
What’s the impact of emotions on implicit memory?
- Whenever priming stimulus has some emotional valence => enhancement of the priming effect i.e. better recall, greater influence on behavior
In general what is the effect of emotions on memory? Plus explain in the graph
Whenever stimulus is emotional (whether negative or positive) people in general remember the stimulus better than neutral
Graph
=> For arousal no difference
=> For valence - memory is better for negative stimuli than positive
Does the general emotional impact persist for incidental memory?
Procedure: p. are shown stimuli
-> tell them it will be a memory test = Intentional memory test
-> don’t tell them, e.g. Do you like this image? = incidental memory test
Findings:
=> In both cases emotional = better memory
Can supression of emotions impact memory?
Procedure: P. watched slides of injured men
-> got no instructions
-> instructed to supress emotions
Findings:
=> for supression group
=> worse recall
=> increased cardiovascular activation
Which areas of the brain may be responsible for this connection?
Comparing how many emotional films could p. recall and their amygdala activation
=> correlation
What are flashbulb memories? What may for example remember? How accurate are they? Could it get hindered somehow?
= extremely detailed, vivid, memory connected to a significantly emotional events
- people may then even remember how exactly they felt, where they were, what they were doing
- both positive and negative
- BUT may still have some inaccuracies
- BUT if people have damage to amygdala -> may experience less flashbulb memories
Explain the research regarding retrieval of autobiographical memories and amygdala activation.
Procedure: p. asked to retrieve and imagine the same pleasant and unpleasant or neutral autobiographical events repeatedly while in fMRI
Findings:
=> Repeated retrieval did not activate amygdala (since it’s autobiographical - hippocampus may work harder at this moment)
=> Graph shows the 4 trials
Is is correct to think of memory just being housed in hippocampus?
- Hippocampus is actually part of entire network e.g. Default mode network
-> e.g. when day dreaming may activate memory systems
What are context dependent memories?
= better retrieval of information when the person is in the same particular state/context in which they have learned it
-Procedure: p. studied info when sober or when drunk
- Findings:
=> Being in the same state as in learning phase increases recall in that state
How would you define memory context dependency?
= being in the same emotional state at learning and retrieval makes the retrieval better.
What part/process of the memory can be improved by stress?
Procedure: rodents were given a stimulant drug AFTER training of maze learning
Finding:
=> The drug improved consolidation of the memory (not simply encoding, attention etc.)
=> It can be also impaired
How does this task work? What happens if we add amphetamine?
Procedure: Spatial learning task - Morris water maze -> injected amphetamine after initial learning EITHER hippocampus OR amygdala
- Findings:
=> Enhancement of memory consolidation- amygdala connected to insula, ACC, PFC
Does stress always have a positive impact on memory? At what point? Location?
- Stress exposure or glucocordicoids injected shortly BEFORE TESTING => impairs memory retention e.g. in water maze
- Only works if injected in hippocampus NOT amygdala (declarative m.)
- higher levels of cortisol = worse memory
Explain the research on emotion X STM.
- Procedure: fixate -> items in a circle -> some threatening x neutral -> delay -> arrow indicating which item to retrieve
- Findings:
=> Better recall for threatening stimuli
=> With much longer delay info decays more quickly
=> drops way faster for positive, neutral (negative emotional valence decays in a flatter way - iconic memory decays slower)
What is meant by temporal element of memory? What region is responsible to it? How is it connected to affective spillover?
- Hippocampus is essential for putting time and place stamps e.g. remembering that I went to Flevopark with Femke at the end of first year
- Has individual cells that encoding timing, place, organization - Affective spillover
- Interaction of multiple regions (hippocampal-entorhinal region) => gives rise to temporal stamps to emotional events
- Amygdala, dlPFC, hippocampus (hippocampal-entorhinal region) - E.g. If I remember having great time in a theater -> I’ll expect to attain the same emotions in another theater
- Depression - stimulation may sometimes be provided to PFC
Does instructed fear (that doesn’t come true) affect amygdala activity?
Procedure: instruct p. that blue square is paired with a shock BUT it wasn’t
Finding:
=> despite this, controls always express fear (both explicitly and implicitly i.e. skin consuctance)
=> amygdala damage - no implicit learning
What was this research about? Procedure? Findings? Name of the phenomenon?
Procedure: showing p. 2 distinct categories - tools x animal
- Pre-conditioning stage: just presented items randomly, one-by-one
- Pavlovian conditioning: only one category was paired with a shock e.g. animal
- Post-conditioning: random sequence of those items
- memory test: saying whether the items shown already occured
Findings:
=> Whenever we received a shock - memory was better
=> EVEN for items from the category that was presented in pre instead in pavlovian (i.e. wasn’t paired with a shock)
= Emotional tagging
