Awake ripples enhance emotional memory encoding in the human brain
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Updated: Jul 6, 2025

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion
Published on: May 4, 2011
Haoxin Zhang1,2, Ivan Skelin3,4, Shiting Ma5
1Department of Neurology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, 92603, CA, USA. haoxinz1@uci.edu.
Abstract:
Enhanced memory for emotional experiences is hypothesized to depend on amygdala-hippocampal interactions during memory consolidation. Here we show using intracranial recordings from the human amygdala and the hippocampus during an emotional memory encoding and discrimination task increased awake ripples after encoding of emotional, compared to neutrally-valenced stimuli. Further, post-encoding ripple-locked stimulus similarity is predictive of later memory discrimination. Ripple-locked stimulus similarity appears earlier in the amygdala than in hippocampus and mutual information analysis confirms amygdala influence on hippocampal activity. Finally, the joint ripple-locked stimulus similarity in the amygdala and hippocampus is predictive of correct memory discrimination. These findings provide electrophysiological evidence that post-encoding ripples enhance memory for emotional events.
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