Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 31, 2025

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion
Published on: May 4, 2011
Emotional influences on remembering and forgetting explained by frontal and parietal dynamics
Zhuo Chen1, Lin Wang1, Shaofei Ying1
1MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, People's Republic of China.
None:
Based on item-method directed forgetting (DF) task, 60 participants were recruited to explore the influence of emotion (negative, neutral, and positive) on memory encoding processing, with all data referring to the encoding phase of the task. Behavioral results showed that participants were more successful at remembering negative pictures that needed to be forgotten, with both higher recognition rates and discrimination accuracy (Pr) compared with neutral pictures. In the brain, parietal activities reflected preferential processing during negative picture viewing through enhanced late parietal positive potentials (LPP) relative to neutral ones. In addition, "Remember" (R) instruction evoked a larger parietal P3 component, whereas "Forget" (F) instruction evoked a stronger frontal N2 component, each of which component was significantly associated with the DF effect (i.e., more recognized items of R-cue than that of F-cue), reflecting the fact that inhibitory control and selective rehearsal mechanisms were jointly responsible for the directed forgetting of emotional materials. Finally, we showed the presence of instruction-evoked low-frequency phase synchronization between frontal and parietal regions, and that these synchronization patterns differed between R-cue and F-cue in an emotion-dependent manner. Together, these findings reveal cognitive mechanisms and specific patterns of large-scale phase synchronization underlying active forgetting of emotional memories, deepening our comprehension of the interplay between cognition and emotion.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study provides experimental evidence that emotional memories, especially negative ones, are more difficult to intentionally forget than neutral memories within the item-method directed forgetting paradigm. It explores the cognitive mechanisms underlying this process, highlighting the role of selective rehearsal and inhibitory control. In addition, it reveals emotion-dependent low-frequency phase synchronization between frontal and parietal regions, offering new insights into active forgetting of emotional memories.
Related Concept Videos
Role of Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex in Memory
Interference and Decay
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...
Forgetting
Encoding...
Higher Mental Functions of Brain: Learning and Memory
Explicit Memories
Episodic memory contains information about personally experienced events and is reported as a story. An example of episodic memory is recalling a birthday celebration. This type of memory includes the what, where, and when of an event, as...
Traumatic Memory

