Two routes to emotional memory: Distinct neural processes for valence and arousal

“In addition to different types of encoding (typical encod - ing versus retrieval-based encoding), the interval between encoding and retrieval may also influence the emotion-induced memory effects (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Mcgaugh, 2004; Smith et al., 2006 ).”

“Functional connectivity between the MTL and mPFC is also associated with successful emotional memory encoding (Kensinger and Corkin, 2004; Berkers et al., 2016).”

“The classification of stimuli in different emotional dimensions is also necessary, because some studies have shown that valence and the arousal influence the indexes of retrieval through different cognitive processes and neural mechanisms [42, 43].”

“Indeed, valence and arousal have both been widely shown to affect memory (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2004), as has stress (see Vedhara, Hyde, Gilchrist, Tytherleigh, & Plummer, 2000).”

“…across a range of paradigms and stimulus types (e.g., Borsutzky, Fujiwara, Brand, & Markowitsch, 2010; Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Nagae & Moscovitch, 2002; Talmi, Anderson, Riggs, Caplan, & Moscovitch, 2008) and is particularly robust for arousing…”

“A plenty of studies showed that signals detected from many brain regions were applied to predict the subject’s behavior during a scanning session of fMRI [6] [7] [8].”

“Bebês 4,79 (0,42) 4,18 (0,87) 4,28 (2,81) 8,09 (1,36) Cobras 4,78 (0,48) 4,30 (0,83) 6,54 (1,88) 3,36 (2,12) Sexo 4,78 (0,44) 4,28 (0,76) 7,75 (1,56) 7,79 (1,64) Comida 4,77 (0,50) 3,78 (1,09) 6,92 (2,12) 7,92 (1,41) Acidentes 4,74 (0,44) 4,18 (0,71) 6,78 (1,76) 2,15 (1,43) Cogumelos 4,72 (0,55) 4,11 (0,93) 4,23 (1,90…”

“…arousal lead to memory enhancements through distinct behavioral and neural mechanisms, with valence leading to memory enhancement through more controlled, prefrontal processes and arousal leading to memory enhancement through more automatic, amygdala-mediated processes (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“This effect is known as emotional enhancement of memory and has been evidenced in several studies (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Öhman et al., 2001).”

“…을 비롯한 시각 자극과 소리 (Bradley & Lang, 2000), 음악 (Kim & Wedell, 2016), ASMR 자극 (Kim & Kim, 2022) 을 포함한 청각 자극 , 영상 (Kim et al., 2020) 과 같은 시청각 자극 , 식품 (Park et al., 2023) 을 비롯한 미각 자 극 , 기억 회상 (Chanel et al., 2007; Gomes et al., 2013; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004) 이 촉각 자극과 관련하여 기존 연구 (Major, 1895; Ekman et…”

“…valence had less effect on memory when highly aroused emotional information interacted with emotional valence in the research of emotion and memory and that when the arousal of emotional information was low, the effect of valence on memory was greater than the arousal (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“This is in line with previous findings linking memory function to emotional stimuli associated with the reward mechanism [59,60].”

“…u istraživanjima je pokazano da se ovakav materijal bolje memoriše u prvom trenutku izlaganja stimulusima, ali se pod uticajem mehanizama odbrane, tokom vremena potiskuje, te usled zaboravljanja brzo prestaje da se doživljava kao nešto poznato i blisko (Bush & Geer, 2001; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“In respect to memory and attention, valence and arousal seem to be processed differently ( e.g. , Kensinger, 2004 ; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004 ) and different effects of valence and arousal processing, especially for high arousing stimuli across the valence dimension, have been demonstrated,…”

“Understanding how these two dimensions influence memory encoding is crucial for unravelling the neural mechanisms underlying emotional memory enhancement ( Kensinger, 2004).”

“…and human studies have reported that the amygdala (AMY), in interaction with other medial temporal lobe regions such as the hippocampus (HC), participates in the advantageous encoding of emotionally salient information (Dolcos et al. 2004, 2005; Kensinger and Corkin 2004; Sabatinelli et al. 2007).”

“There was no effect of valence on reaction times for either operation [Maintain: F (1, 87) = 0.22, p = 0.64, η 2p = 0.003, BF = 0.12, f 2 = 0.14; Suppress: F (1, 87) = 0.13, p = 0.72, η 2p = 0.001, BF = 0.12, f 2 = 0.14].”

“Human experience is characterized by a continual ebb and flow of emotions, shaping our attention ( 1 , 2 ) and memory ( 3 , 4 ), as well as guiding how we make decisions and interact with others ( 5 – 7 ).”

“…the categorical relational process in enactment learning (Wang et al., 2021), the survival processing e ff ect (Kroneisen et al., 2014; Kronei-sen et al., 2016), the self-reference e ff ect (Yang et al., 2012), and the enhanced emotional memory e ff ect (Kang et al., 2014; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“, 2001), this prioritized processing could translate into advantaged memory for negative information (Kensinger and Corkin, 2004).”

“The magnetic resonance image (MRI) imaging technology was used to discover the relationship between amygdala activation and memory that changes directly with the intensity of emotional activation during learning, and it is not critical whether the emotional state is positive or negative (47).”

“We also examined the impact of sentiments on temporal dating errors, since emotional memories are often more salient (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004); we hypothesized that sentiment score could interact with memory for temporal information and names in e-mails, but we did not make any a-priori…”

“Furthermore, valence and arousal have been related to distinct brain structures (Anders, Lotze, Erb, Grodd, & Birbaumer, 2004; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Lewis, Critchley, Rotshtein, & Dolan, 2007) and temporal dynamics (Codispoti, Ferrari, & Bradley, 2007; Gianotti et al., 2008; for review see…”

“对高唤醒和无 ( 低 ) 唤醒负性情绪 词进行的脑成像研究发现 , 对高唤醒情绪词的记忆 增强效应主要涉及杏仁核和海马网络 [42] .”

“Some previous studies have described an effect of stimulus valence on activity in the inferior parietal lobule (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Mickley Steinmetz & Kensinger, 2009), corresponding to the ventral PPC activations reported here, but these studies assessed the influence of the emotional…”

“…in nature and has been found with diverse stimuli, such as pictorial scenes, faces, or words (Adelman & Estes, 2013; Gupta & Srinivasan, 2009; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Ochsner, 2000; Talmi & Moscovitch, 2004; Talmi, Schimmack, Paterson, & Moscovitch, 2007;Wang, 2013), and under intentional…”

“…evidencia, a través de estudios por imágenes, sobre qué estímulos negativos de bajo nivel de activación y de alto nivel de activación eran recordados más que los estímulos neutros, pero a través de rutas neurales diferentes (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Madan, Fujiwara, Caplan, & Sommers, 2017).”

“…pictures, is generally remembered more successfully than neutral material (e.g., Chapman et al., 2013; Davidson et al., 2006; Davis et al., 2019; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Le Bigot et al., 2018; Talamini et al., 2022; Yeung & Fernandes, 2021), whereas negative emotional states such as stress…”

“Emotional arousal has been found to strengthen memory encoding (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004) and in addition to that, as age influences memory functioning, with increasing age, individuals start to prioritize favoring positive information and regulate emotions as an adaptive strategy rather than a…”

“At physiological and neural levels, valence and arousal show partly distinct response patterns and neural systems (Lang et al., 1993; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Xu et al., 2015; Amini et al., 2026).”

“Although emotional memory effects are often attributed to arousal (Dolcos et al., 2004; Murty et al., 2010), converging behavioural and neuroimaging evidence also points to valence-related differences (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Mickley Steinmetz et al., 2010).”

“To avoid the ”negativity bias” where negative emotional content captures attention and slows processing (Baumeister et al., 2001; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004), the system requires VAL � 4.0, restricting the corpus to neutral and positive concepts (Frijda, 1986; Russell, 1980).”

“The amygdala then modulates the consolidation of memory traces through its extensive structural and functional connections with long-term memory systems (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; McGaugh, 2004; Šimić et al., 2021).”

“A significant interaction between Category and Memory , however, showed that the advantage of recollection over familiarity was greater for unpleasant images than for neutral images, β = 0.20, p 0.001 , replicating prior findings 23,25,26 .”

“…systems: valence-related processing engages prefrontal – hippocampal networks associated with controlled evaluation, whereas arousal-related processing depends more on amygdala-linked mechanisms supporting rapid, automatic attentional capture (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Nielen et al., 2009).”

“These findings are consistent with accounts proposing that valence and arousal exert dissociable influences on cognition (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004) and that the processing advantage for negative stimuli reflects something beyond physiological activation.”

“…angry vs. neutral faces in adults also stands in contrast to previous studies that have reported enhanced memory for negative faces compared to neutral ones in adults 40–44 and in contrast to studies that report emotion to enhance item memory for different types of stimuli in adults 3,10,11,45 .”

“The processing mechanisms that enhance long-term memory for emotional information (e.g., emotional orienting, elaboration) may distract from staying on-task during working memory tasks, thereby impairing performance (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“Kensinger and Corkin ( 2004) reported that memory enhancement for low-arousal valenced words relied on controlled encoding processes and was reduced when attentional resources were divided, whereas memory enhancement for high-arousal words occurred automatically, persisting even under limited…”

“Previous studies have demonstrated that the retention interval influences emotion-induced memory effects (Jaeger et al., 2009; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Pierce & Kensinger, 2011).”

“La memoria afectiva (o emocional) puede ben-eficiar a los investigadores representando un resultado indi-recto de la modulación de otros sistemas neurológicos ded-icados a la codificación de memoria general, p.ej. atención, memoria de trabajo, y elaboración semántica [1,5,30,40].”

“…affective working memory, emotional memory formation and emotion regulation (Aminoff et al., 2013; Dolcos et al., 2012; Dolcos & Denkova, 2014; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Li et al., 2016; Mikels & Reuter-Lorenz, 2019), highlighting the central role in the formation of cognitive awareness by…”

“The amygdala, too, has previously been found to play an important role in memory for valence specifically (Cahill, 2000; Kensinger and Corkin, 2004), helping people preferentially approach stimuli that yield positive outcomes (Phelps et al., 1997; Cahill, 2000; Kensinger and Corkin, 2004).”

“정서 자극이 중립 자극보다 잘 기억되는 이유는 기억의 부호화 단계에서 정서 자극이 중립 자극보다 더 많은 주의를 받기 때문이며 , 이러한 현상 을 정서적 기억 향상 (emotional enhancement of memory) 이라고 한다 (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“Considering the evidence showing the critical role of stimulus valence (e.g. Kensinger & Corkin, 2004), Experiment 4, similar to Experiment 3, tests the hypothesis that post-encoding negative arousal as induced by a video clip would enhance memory for priori-tised words but would weaken memory for…”

“In line with this finding, the amygdala can support memory for valence (Cahill, 2000; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Phelps et al., 1997b), helping people preferentially approach stimuli that yield positive outcomes (Cahill, 2000; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Phelps et al., 1997b).”

“…and neuroimaging studies using diverse stimuli such as sounds (Bradley & Lang, 2000; Viinikainen et al., 2012), pictures (Larsen et al., 2003), music (Gomez & Danuser, 2004; Kim & Wedell, 2016), videos (Kim et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2020), and recall (Gomes et al., 2013; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“Typically, individuals are more likely to remember events or stimuli that evoke an emotional response (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”

“See also the separate works on the role of emotional salience by Haidt (2001), Kensinger and Corkin (2004), and Dolcos et al. (2004).”

“Enhancing effects of emotion are notably attributed to two dimensions of emotional information: arousal, ranging from calm to exciting, and valence, ranging from unpleasant to pleasant (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Russell, 1980).”

“Emotion effects may be driven by arousal, equally affecting positive and negative contents, or by positive or negative valence (Dolcos & Cabeza, 2002; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).”