Emotional learning retroactively enhances item memory but distorts source attribution.

ABSTRACT: An adaptive memory system should prioritize information surrounding a powerful learning event that may prove useful for predicting future meaningful events. The behavioral tagging hypothesis provides a mechanistic framework to interpret how weak experiences persist as durable memories through temporal association with a strong experience. Memories are composed of multiple elements, and different mnemonic aspects of the same experience may be uniquely affected by mechanisms that retroactively modulate a weakly encoded memory. Here, we investigated how emotional learning affects item and source memory for related events encoded close in time. Participants encoded trial-unique category exemplars before, during, and after Pavlovian fear conditioning. Selective retroactive enhancements in 24-h

SUBMITTER: Hennings AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8139636 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature