Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 27, Issue 1, 1 August 2005, Pages 167-177
NeuroImage

Retrieving accurate and distorted memories: Neuroimaging evidence for effects of emotion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.03.038Get rights and content

Abstract

While limbic activity is known to be associated with successful encoding of emotional information, it is less clear whether it is related to successful retrieval. The present fMRI study assessed the effects of emotion on the neural processes engaged during retrieval of accurate compared to distorted memories. Prior to the scan, participants (16 young adults) viewed names of neutral (e.g., frog) and emotional (e.g., snake) objects and formed a mental image of the object named. They were shown photos of half of the objects. During the fMRI scan, participants saw object names and indicated whether or not they had seen the corresponding photo. Memory distortions (misattributions) occurred when participants incorrectly indicated whether or not a photo had been studied. Activity in some regions (e.g., L anterior hippocampus) was related to accurate retrieval (correct attributions > misattributions) for emotional and neutral items. However, activity in other regions corresponded with accurate retrieval specifically for emotional items (e.g., in R amygdala/periamygdaloid cortex and L orbitofrontal cortex) or for neutral items (e.g., in lateral inferior prefrontal cortex and R posterior hippocampus). Results indicate that emotional salience modulates the processes engaged during accurate retrieval and that activity in limbic regions corresponds with accurate memory assignment for emotional items. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate a link between limbic engagement at retrieval and accurate memory attribution.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants comprised 17 native English speaking Harvard undergraduate or graduate students. The data from one participant were excluded due to scanner malfunction. The remaining 16 young adults (8 women, 8 men) were ages 18–30. All were right-handed, native English speakers screened to exclude those with contra-indicators for MRI scanning, or with a history of depression. No participant was taking centrally-active medications. Informed consent was obtained from all participants in a manner

Behavioral data

ANOVA with response type (picture, no picture), item history (word-only, word–picture, new), and emotion type (emotional, neutral) as within-subject factors revealed a main effect of response type (F(1,15) = 21.1, P < 0.001, partial eta-squared = 0.59) as well as interactions between response type and item history (F(1,14) = 393., P < 0.001, partial eta-squared = 0.85) and among response type, item history, and emotion type (F(1,14) = 13.0, P < 0.001, partial eta-squared = 0.65). This three-way

Neuroimaging data

Random-effects analyses contrasted activation as a function of memory performance (comparing correct memory attributions and memory misattributions) separately for each emotion type (emotional or neutral) and item history type (from a word-only or word–picture trial; Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4). Because the goal of this study was to examine how the emotional content of the stimuli (regardless of their item histories) affected the neural processes that were associated with accurate

Discussion

The central aim of this study was to examine the processes that were related to accurate memory assignment for emotional and neutral items. The results suggest three principal conclusions. First, activity in regions implicated in prior studies of episodic retrieval (including a region of activity centered in the anterior hippocampus) corresponded with accurate retrieval regardless of the item's emotional content. Second, despite these commonalities, emotional content modulates the neural

Summary

By adopting a reality-monitoring paradigm that required participants to indicate which memories were attributable to external presentation, the present study could examine the processes engaged during correct memory attributions versus misattributions of emotional and neutral items. The results indicated that many of the regions found to correspond with retrieval of contextual details for neutral items (e.g., Dobbins et al., 2003, Giovanello et al., 2004, Wheeler and Buckner, 2003) also were

Acknowledgments

We thank Ronnie Bryan and Mariko Jameson for help with participant recruitment and testing. This research was supported by grants MH60941 (to D.L.S.) and MH070199 (to E.A.K.) from the National Institutes of Health and by a Massachusetts Biomedical Research Corporation Tosteson Postdoctoral Fellowship (to E.A.K.). Figures depicting the medial temporal-lobe regions reported in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4 are available by contacting the first author.

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