Emotion’s Impact on Memory Encoding and Recall

Abstract

: The fact that emotional experiences are easier to encode and recall later suggests that emotions have a significant role to play in memory formation and the neural pathways required to generate long-term memories. The paper will briefly outline the findings of experimental behavioral and neuroscience studies about the impact of emotions on memory encoding and retrieval. Behavioral data indicate that emotional stimuli are more attended to and more deeply processed such that they result in a higher level of memory retention. As indicated by neurocognitive studies, an emotional arousal triggers the amygdala and communicates with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, therefore promoting the encoding and consolidation of the emotional experience. Coordinated oscillatory activity is also observed in the amygdala-hippocampal circuit after encoding electrophysiologically, which is a sign of improved emotional memory discrimination. By understanding these principles, it can aid in the future studies in regard to dynamic.