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Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context.

ABSTRACT: Memory is often better for emotional rather than neutral stimuli. The benefit for emotional items could be the result of an associative mechanism whereby items are associated to a slowly updating context. Through this process, emotional features are integrated with context during study, and are reactivated during test. The presence of emotion in context would both provide a stronger retrieval cue, enhancing memory of emotional items, as well as lead to emotional clustering, whereby emotionally similar items are recalled consecutively. To measure whether associative mechanisms can explain the enhancement for emotional items, we conducted a free recall study in which most items were emotionally neutral to minimize effects of mood induction and to more closely reflect naturalistic settings. We found that emotional items were significantly more likely to be recalled than neutral items and that participants were more likely to transition between emotional items rather than between emotional and neutral items. Together, these results suggest that contextual encoding and retrieval mechanisms may drive the benefit for emotional items both within and outside the laboratory.

SUBMITTER: Long NM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4547905 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context.

Long Nicole M NM Danoff Michelle S MS Kahana Michael J MJ

Psychonomic bulletin & review 20151001 5

Memory is often better for emotional rather than neutral stimuli. The benefit for emotional items could be the result of an associative mechanism whereby items are associated to a slowly updating context. Through this process, emotional features are integrated with context during study, and are reactivated during test. The presence of emotion in context would both provide a stronger retrieval cue, enhancing memory of emotional items, as well as lead to emotional clustering, whereby emotionally s ...[more]

PMID: 25604771

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Project description:Dentate gyrus (DG) is widely thought to provide a teaching signal that enables hippocampal encoding of memories, but its role during retrieval is poorly understood. Some data and models suggest that DG plays no role in retrieval; others encourage the opposite conclusion. To resolve this controversy, we evaluated the effects of optogenetic inhibition of dorsal DG during context fear conditioning, recall, generalization, and extinction in male mice. We found that (1) inhibition during training impaired context fear acquisition; (2) inhibition during recall did not impair fear expression in the training context, unless mice had to distinguish between similar feared and neutral contexts; (3) inhibition increased generalization of fear to an unfamiliar context that was similar to a feared one and impaired fear expression in the conditioned context when it was similar to a neutral one; and (4) inhibition impaired fear extinction. These effects, as well as several seemingly contradictory published findings, could be reproduced by BACON (Bayesian Context Fear Algorithm), a physiologically realistic hippocampal model positing that acquisition and retrieval both involve coordinated activity in DG and CA3. Our findings thus suggest that DG contributes to retrieval and extinction, as well as to the initial establishment of context fear.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Despite abundant evidence that the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) plays a critical role in memory, it remains unclear whether the role of DG relates to memory acquisition or retrieval. Using contextual fear conditioning and optogenetic inhibition, we show that DG contributes to both of these processes. Using computational simulations, we identify specific mechanisms through which the suppression of DG affects memory performance. Finally, we show that DG contributes to fear extinction learning, a process in which learned fear is attenuated through exposures to a fearful context in the absence of threat. Our data resolve a long-standing question about the role of DG in memory and provide insight into how disorders affecting DG, including aging, stress, and depression, influence cognitive processes.

Dataset Information

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context.

Publications

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context.

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