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Updated: Aug 7, 2026
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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion
Published on: May 4, 2011
Modulation of prefrontal cortex activation by emotional words in recognition memory
Lars Kuchinke1, Arthur M Jacobs, Melissa L-H Võ
1Department of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. kuchinke@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Neuroreport
|June 23, 2006
Summary
This study shows the brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Emotional stimuli are often better remembered than neutral stimuli.
- The prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in memory retrieval.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how emotional valence (positive, negative) affects verbal recognition memory.
- To identify specific prefrontal cortex regions involved in processing emotional words during memory retrieval.
Main Methods:
- Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used.
- Participants performed a yes/no recognition task with positive, negative, and neutral words.
Main Results:
- Behavioral data indicated enhanced processing of emotional words.
- fMRI revealed distinct prefrontal cortex activations for emotional word retrieval.
- Right mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex correlated with negative word retrieval.
- Right ventromedial and orbitofrontal cortex responded more to positive words.
Conclusions:
- Emotional valence modulates prefrontal cortex activity during verbal recognition memory.
- Specific prefrontal subregions are sensitive to the emotional content of words.
- Findings suggest familiarity-based recognition bias for emotional words influences memory monitoring.
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