Remembering the Details: Effects of Emotion

Overview

Journal Emot Rev

Date 2009 May 8

PMID 19421427

Citations 212

Authors

Elizabeth A Kensinger

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Though emotion conveys memory benefits, it does not enhance memory equally for all aspects of an experience nor for all types of emotional events. In this review, I outline the behavioral evidence for arousal's focal enhancements of memory and describe the neural processes that may support those focal enhancements. I also present behavioral evidence to suggest that these focal enhancements occur more often for negative experiences than for positive ones. This effect of valence appears to arise because of valence-dependent effects on the neural processes recruited during episodic encoding and retrieval, with negative affect associated with increased engagement of sensory processes and positive affect leading to enhanced recruitment of conceptual processes.

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