Lecture 8 - Emotional Memory Part 1 Flashcards
What is emotion?
● Emotion: a cluster of three distinct but interrelated sets of phenomena— physiological responses, overt behaviors, and conscious feelings—produced in response to a situation
Often times when something happens that is emotional you may expirence feelings with
an be accompained by a behvaiour and physiological changes
- we may all have a fear response to a bear but for a spider some of us may expierence
fear and some of us may not
Whats the key question about emotion and memory?
Key Question: What happens when we experience highly emotional events? How does that affect our memory?
How to Remember a disaster without being shattered by it?
Person who is featured in this picture was her professor
- this person told her about being in a near plane crash which we turned into a research study
- she studided PTSD
- Thought this would provide knowledge on the relationship between emotion and memory
- do not need to know this for the test!
What is the The Air Transat Event: August 24th, 2001
in 2001 the plane ran out of fule
- the pilot made an accoucement that
he would need to land the plane in the
ocean in which many ppl thought they
woud die, ppl were vcery scared
- the pilot managed to fly the plane onto
a military source and everyone on the
plane survived. Some ppl has injuries
but no one died
- although many ppl suffered psychologically
after this
what was the experiment behind the air transat event trauma? What were the key results?
“Tell me everything you can remember…”
AIR TRANSAT Event
A third condition will not be discussed
NEUTRAL Event
Asked Ss to go into the lab and say everything they remembered from the event
- simple design
- this event took place in 2001 and this study was a few years later
Detail Counting:
Score these events so we can quantify them
- trying to see how detailed these memories are
- theories that show all kinds of patterns here
- we wanted to pull out the episodic memories
Internal details are “episodic” details
● The Air Transat event was associated with a more detailed memory.
○ Passengers remembered more than double the amount of details for the airline incident in comparison to the neutral condition. Thus they have a highly detailed memory for this very emotional event.
○ Of course this does not tell us anything about accuracy
(Ss were able to recall a lot of detail, almost double the amount they could for
a neural event)
This study focused on the number of details ppl could produce
- but… just becaause someone has a detailed memory does not mean it
is an accurate one
- but do not disreaag the first part. Just because their memory might not
be fully accurate it still very much impacts their life (memories still
are intenese wether or not they are accurate)
How Do We Examine Accuracy For Real Life Events?
Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested that some memories are especially enduring.
Flashbulb memories: “a vivid, enduring memory associated with a personally significant and emotional event, often including such details as where the individual was or what they were doing at the time of the event.” –APA
(Other ppl have tried to get on this question
of accuracy through flashbulb memories
- stamp in their memory of exactly what was
going on when something happened)
The Air Transat Event seems to fit here
But are these types of events accurate?
What was the study on flashbulb memories related to 9/11?
“On September 12, 2001, 54 Duke students recorded their memory of first hearing about the terrorist attacks of September 11 and of a recent everyday event. They were tested again either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later.”
Test-retest approach used as a proxy for accuracy. It measures the consistency of recall across multiple time points.
Study that was done using test-re test
- we as researchers were not there when the events happen. So what we do is
ask Ss to recall events very soon after they occured
- the researchers got together so they can test ppl 1,2,3 days after the event occured
- They take the original recall as the ground truth (this is when they come in
days later)
- and now the question is if they come back 6 months later, will that record be the
same or different from the original recall
- Are asked the same questionaire at different time points
Key Result: In comparison to the neutral event, 9/11 memories were more vivid/detailed and folks were more but confident in their memory for that event. But the 9/11 event did not differ in accuracy from the neutral event.
Rich full memory of the event (vivid)
but when looking at the test re test they were not more consistent for the 9/11
event than the controlled event. They made lots of errors for both
- they have very vivid memories but they are not protected from distortion
Is Taylor Correct?
“… It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well
Wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all
Down the stairs, you were there, you remember it all It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well”
-Taylor Swift
If this quote was put on a test
- is taylor right or not?
- she has a vivid detailed memory
- but is it accurate?
What are the caveats about the research on flashbulb memory?
● Not every study shows the same pattern of results. For 9/11 in particular, some studies show that the vividness of the memory depends on how personally relevant it was to the rememberer (e.g., how close you lived to the event).
Not every study shows the same pattern of results
- personal relavance is importance
- ex: if you live in manhatten the would show more vividness is their memory
What are our approaches to studying memory in the lab?
● Researchers can study the effects of emotion on memory by creating emotional experiences in the laboratory and then testing memory
(We want to know about the human expirence
- we have been challagened to look at the accuracy so we have laboratory events for them (not traumatic but those that would evoke emotion))
● What are the pros and cons of a laboratory versus an autobiographical memory approach?
(In a lab
- Ss come in and they see pictures that elicit emotion
- Then you test their memory for those pictures later
- These lack the personal relavance
- These lab approaches help us understand the neurobiology of memory)
What are two key points from this reading?
● Emotion does not enhance accuracy for all detail types…
● Emotion enhances the “central” details but not the “peripheral” details
● This might be strongest for negative memories
What the lab studies show
- emotion does not enhance accuracy for all types of details
I remember seeing the bear and its brown, wet fur… à“central” detail
If you encountered a bear you may say you remember
seeing a bear and its brown wet fur this is
the central detail
But I do not remember where I saw it… à“peripheral” details (This is the peripheral details )
○ “Individuals may later remember the specific sensory details associated with a negative item’s presentation (e.g., “a green and black snake with yellow eyes”) but only the gist of the positive item’s presentation (e.g., “a cake”) because they engage more sensory processing during the encoding of negative information and more semantic or conceptual processing during the encoding of positive information.” (Kensinger Paper)
(We remember the snake the green eyes but we do not remeber what was around it)
○ Take Home: Negative memories might be more sensory, and positive memories are more “semantic”
For positive memories this is not as consistent in the literature
- we do not remember all the central core deatails we would for negative events
- do the reading but if you read the slides you are good (sooooo…. dont do the reading?)
READ THIS CARD
“Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy or bouncing like a rubber ball from now to then to back again. … In the traumatic universe the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas.”
― David J. Morris
This is a quote from somebody that is trying to explain the way their truama affects
them
- quos in the enviornment can bring you back to that trauma
What is post traumatic stress disorder?
● “Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop when someone lives through or witnesses an event in which they believe that there is a threat to their life or physical integrity and safety and experiences fear, terror, or helplessness.”
What happens when people have PTSD?
● Individuals with PTSD often relive the trauma in painful recollections; they avoid activities associated with the traumatic event; they experience higher physiological arousal
What happens when ppl have PTSD?
- often invovled painful vivid recollections
- invovles avoidance
- ppl feel aroused very easily
Can we treat PTSD? How?
● PTSD can be treated in different ways, including through psychotherapy or psychopharmacological intervention
● Researchers are trying to find new treatments that focus on altering the trauma memory
● A lot of this work involves using animal models
(a lot of this work begins with animal models
- some of the treatment involves changing the memrory to remove some of the negative affect
^- does not work for everyone but does work for some)
Can non-human animals experience emotions?
Do non human animals expirence emotion?
- if we take the original definition of emotion, we can
never get to the conscious feeling because we
cannot ask animals this
● Most researchers study “emotion” in non-human animals by studying fear.
● Fear response: a cluster of physiological changes, overt behaviors, and conscious reactions that accompany the emotion of fear; in the laboratory, the physiological changes and motor behaviors (such as freezing) are often taken to imply presence of fear, whether or not the accompanying conscious experience of fear can be documented
● But we cannot measure conscious feelings!
What is a common paradigm relating to emotion in non-human animals? What are the caveats?
● Conditioned response: a classically conditioned response (CR), such as physiological arousal, that is produced in response to a neutral stimulus that that has been paired with an emotion-evoking stimulus.
take two stimuli and pair them together
- pair an environement with a shock
- chamber A is now associated with a fear
- often times this is reffered to as a conditioned response
because the animal would not naturally freeze to this
enviornment initally but they will after it has been paired with
a shock
● Are we measuring emotions in the same way?
● Are we assessing the same form of memory?
Can we edit memories?
Retrieved memories become fragile and are consolidated again → reconsolidation
Memory is a “work in progress” … constantly constructed and remodeled in response to learning and conditions (In order to gain ideas ppl use non human animal models
- to understand the mechanisms in which emotion shapes memory
- this gets us to the basic idea of how memory works)
Some evidence suggests we can “reconsolidate” a memory. Reconsolidation refers to the ides that when a memory is retrieved, it enters a vulnerable state and can be changed.
(everytime you retrive a memory something neurological needs to happen for
that memory to be sustained)
Can we use this for therapeutic intervention?
What is the study about reconsolidation in animal models? WATCH VIDEO ON THIS
Nader et al. 2000
What happens if the rat is injected with a
protein synthesis inhibitor (Anisomycin) after a newly encoded event?
Pair a tone with a shock
Rat will freeze to the tone
study that was done in rodents
- went along and ran the study and it worked
- starts with a basic fear conditioning. (pair a tone and shock and the rat will
fear the tone)
- if we inject this protein sythesis inhibitor what happenas right after the memory is
encoded what will happen to the memory
Anisomycin prevents changes in synapses (by blocking the making of new proteins) that are involved in the formation of new memories
Infuse into the amygdala (a structure we will discuss next class)
when they are given the tone do they freeze?
the answer is no and this is becaause we blocked the protein synthesis
In these two conditions, you are simply showing you can block the consolidation of the memory, leading to forgetting. But can you induce forgetting by blocking “reconsolidation”?
what if you gave it the next day? you do see freezing and this is because they did it too late
- something neurobiologicaal that happens if you block that you lose the memory but if
you wait too long that memory is safe
Critical condition was this third condition
- he reactivtaed the memory by only giving the tone
- he was able to use this animal model to go in a mess with the memory
“… some property of retrieval may destabilize the structural changes such that they now have to be reconsolidated with the aid of new protein (Nader et al. 2000).”
Think about what the different conditions show
What did each condition actually demonstrate?
What do we know about reconsolidation in humans?
Brunet and coworkers (2008), trauma study 1. Participants reactivated a trauma memory
2. Drug (Propranolol) administered to block amygdala stress receptors while reconsolidation of the memory is taking place; control group receives placebo
3. One week later, reactivation of same memory = lower stress responses in the experimental group
This type of research is in it’s early days and can be controversial in terms of efficacy and mechanisms
Are humans capable of reconsolidation?
- in one study Ss were asked to reactivate a truama memory and
then this drug is adminsteed that is thought to block
- one week later the Ss return to the lab and are asked to retrive the memory
^- they did not expirence the psychological stress that they use to expirence with the
memory
- maybe we can do this is humans! however this is very controversal research some
show it and some do not
