β-Adrenergic Modulation of Emotional Memory-Evoked Human Amygdala and Hippocampal Responses

Human emotional experience is typically associated with enhanced episodic memory. We have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that successful encoding of emotional, compared to neutral, verbal stimuli evokes increased human amygdala responses. Items that evoke amygdala activati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2004-08, Vol.101 (31), p.11454-11458
Main Authors: Strange, B. A., Dolan, R. J., McGaugh, James L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adrenergic beta-Antagonists - administration & dosage
Adult
Amygdala
Amygdala - physiology
Behavioral neuroscience
Biological Sciences
Brain
Drug interactions
Emotional expression
Emotions
Emotions - drug effects
Emotions - physiology
Female
Hippocampus
Hippocampus - physiology
Humans
Image contrast
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Memory
Memory recall
Neurology
Nouns
Placebos
Propranolol - administration & dosage
Receptors, Adrenergic, beta - metabolism
Recognition, Psychology - drug effects
Recognition, Psychology - physiology
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Summary:Human emotional experience is typically associated with enhanced episodic memory. We have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that successful encoding of emotional, compared to neutral, verbal stimuli evokes increased human amygdala responses. Items that evoke amygdala activation at encoding evoke greater hippocampal responses at retrieval compared to neutral items. Administration of the β-adrenergic antagonist propranolol at encoding abolishes the enhanced amygdala encoding and hippocampal retrieval effects, despite propranolol being no longer present at retrieval. Thus, memory-related amygdala responses at encoding and hippocampal responses at recognition for emotional items depend on β-adrenergic engagement at encoding. Our results suggest that human emotional memory is associated with a β-adrenergic-dependent modulation of amygdala-hippocampal interactions.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0404282101