The role of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in emotional enhancement of memory: A TMS study

Negative stimuli are often remembered better than neutral stimuli, which is called the emotional enhancement of memory (EEM). We tested whether the role of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in the EEM depended on stimulus valence and/or arousal, and attentional resources. Continuous theta...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive neuroscience 2018-10, Vol.9 (3-4), p.116-126
Main Authors: Weintraub-Brevda, R. Rachel, Chua, Elizabeth F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Achievement tests
Adolescent
Adult
Arousal
Arousal - physiology
Attention - physiology
Emotion
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Female
Humans
Male
memory
Memory - physiology
Prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
TMS
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
valence
VLPFC
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Negative stimuli are often remembered better than neutral stimuli, which is called the emotional enhancement of memory (EEM). We tested whether the role of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in the EEM depended on stimulus valence and/or arousal, and attentional resources. Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) was applied over the left VLPFC, right VLPFC and vertex before encoding 'negative arousing,' 'negative nonarousing,' and 'neutral' words under full and divided attention, followed by a recognition test. The vertex condition showed the EEM effect for 'negative arousing' and 'negative nonarousing' words. However, the right VLPFC condition showed no evidence of the EEM effect for 'negative arousing' or 'negative nonarousing' words, under full attention. In contrast, the left VLPFC condition showed the EEM effect for 'negative arousing' words, but not 'negative nonarousing' words, under full attention. Thus, the left and right VLPFC have different roles in the EEM, depending on valence and arousal.
ISSN:1758-8928
1758-8936
DOI:10.1080/17588928.2018.1496905