Influence of Emotional Expression on Memory Recognition Bias: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Background Most studies of the influence of emotion on memory performance have focused on accuracy. However, there is evidence that emotion can influence other aspects of memory, in particular response bias (overall tendency to classify items as new or old regardless of the accuracy of the response)...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biological psychiatry (1969) 2007-11, Vol.62 (10), p.1126-1133
Main Authors: Sergerie, Karine, Lepage, Martin, Armony, Jorge L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Brain - blood supply
Brain - physiology
Emotion
Expressed Emotion - physiology
faces
Female
fMRI
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical sciences
memory
Memory - physiology
Neuropsychological Tests
Oxygen - blood
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Reaction Time - physiology
response bias
sadness
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Summary:Background Most studies of the influence of emotion on memory performance have focused on accuracy. However, there is evidence that emotion can influence other aspects of memory, in particular response bias (overall tendency to classify items as new or old regardless of the accuracy of the response). Here we investigated the behavioral and neural-related modulation of response bias by emotion. Methods Nineteen healthy individuals performed a recognition memory task on faces with happy, sad, and neutral expressions while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results We observed a familiarity (tendency to say “old”) and novelty (tendency to say “new”) bias for sad and happy faces, respectively. Novelty response bias was associated with amygdala and prefrontal cortex activity, whereas familiarity bias correlated with superior temporal gyrus activation. Conclusions These results show that emotional expressions can have an influence on memory beyond simple accuracy and that this effect is in part mediated by the amygdala, a region previously implicated in emotional perception and memory. Our findings might have important clinical relevance, because they could help explain some of the inconsistencies in the literature regarding emotional memory deficits in psychiatric populations.
ISSN:0006-3223
1873-2402
DOI:10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.12.024