The Effect of Negative and Positive Emotionality on Associative Memory: An fMRI Study
Author Information
Author(s): Okada Go, Okamoto Yasumasa, Kunisato Yoshihiko, Aoyama Shiori, Nishiyama Yoshiko, Yoshimura Shinpei, Onoda Keiichi, Toki Shigeru, Yamashita Hidehisa, Yamawaki Shigeto
Primary Institution: Hiroshima University
Hypothesis
Negative emotion does not necessarily promote good associative memory performance, and the amygdala has disparate influences on associative memory for positive and negative information.
Conclusion
The study found that amygdala activation induced by negative emotion may disrupt associative memory encoding.
Supporting Evidence
- Significant hippocampal activation was observed during both encoding and retrieval.
- Negative emotionality led to increased amygdala responses during encoding.
- Amygdala activation during encoding of negative words was inversely correlated with memory retrieval.
- Participants had lower accuracy rates for negative word and neutral face pairs compared to positive ones.
Takeaway
When people feel negative emotions, they might remember the main idea better but forget the details, making it harder to connect things together.
Methodology
fMRI was used to investigate brain activation during an associative memory task involving encoding and retrieval of word and face pairs.
Potential Biases
The control task did not include real faces, which may confound results related to face perception.
Limitations
The study did not include a neutral word condition, which may affect the interpretation of results regarding negative and positive emotionality.
Participant Demographics
15 healthy volunteers (6 men and 9 women), aged 21–27 years.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p=0.044
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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