Emotional memory: what is it and what is its biological basis?

The memories do not focus only on the events that happened, but also in the physiological responses that occurred simultaneously; in fact, the emotional intensity and relevance of a situation appear to be the key factors that explain its long-term footprint.

Sometimes the emotional memory of an event may even continue to exist after the events have been forgotten; This happens regularly in cases of phobia, in which it is not always remembered what was the traumatic experience that caused the fear to appear.

In this article we will describe what is emotional memory and what are its biological bases, in addition to defining the nature and mechanisms of influence of the relationships between memory and emotions.

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What is emotional memory?

In the field of Psychology we can define emotional memory as learning, storage and recall of events associated with physiological responses that occurred at the time these events took place. It is also related to the retrieval of other information and details associated with the specific event.

However, it is a very broad concept whose use varies depending on the context; For example, the famous theater educator Konstantin Stanislavski called "affective memory" a performance technique consisting of remembering events to evoke specific emotions.

Emotional memory is one of the core aspects of human identity: our most vivid autobiographical memories They are usually associated with very intense emotions, be they positive or negative. It has been argued that we remember the physiological state in which we were at a given moment more than the events themselves.

From the evolutionary perspective, it is argued that emotional memory developed because it increased our ability to adaptation to the environment, allowing us to react quickly to situations that could imply a danger to the survival. In fact, emotions can be understood as the foundations of motivation, what predisposes us to want to achieve certain goals and avoid certain experiences.

In this sense, emotional memory is that which gives meaning to the emotions themselves, since allows our behavior to be articulated according to what we are learning about the consequences of our actions and our way of exposing ourselves to certain environments or situations. Without emotional memory, we would hardly have references about what to do, especially if we have in Note that in our species, behavior depends much more on what we are learning than on our instincts.

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The relationship between emotions and memory

Memory and emotion are closely related processes; all the stages of memory, from information encoding to long-term retrievalare facilitated by emotional factors. This influence is bidirectional, so that memories frequently provoke the appearance of emotions, for example.

Emotion has modulating effects on both declarative or explicit and non-declarative or implicit memory. What makes us remember an event better or worse is not so much its relevance in personal history as the intensity of the emotions we experienced when that moment took place.

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Factors influencing recall

In general, there are two emotional factors that affect memory: the degree of activation and the valence of the emotion. The emotional activation associated with a stimulus or situation causes attention to focus on it, so that will be remembered better in the future, especially if our emotional state is similar to the context of learning.

However, intense emotions can also interfere with other types of memory, specifically procedural and operational or working memory. This affects the consolidation of memories and is related to attention; for example, dissociative experiences that occur under intense stress make information consolidation difficult.

In the framework of the psychology of emotions, the word "valence" is used to designate the positive or negative quality. In general memories associated with pleasant emotions are best remembered and with more details than negatives, especially tailored to advanced ages.

A phenomenon related to emotional valence is that of state dependence, proposed by Bower. State dependence is that we more easily remember emotionally positive events if we are happy and more negative experiences if we feel sad.

Biological bases of emotional memory

The brain structure known as the amygdala it has a fundamental role in emotional memory. In addition to allowing the learning of the association between situations and emotions, the amygdala sends signals that facilitate memory-related operations in other areas of the brain, especially the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Its central role is the classical conditioning learning of emotional responses, by which we associate a stimulus with the emotions we feel while it is present, as in phobias. The activity of the amygdala has been mainly related to negative emotions, and more specifically to fear.

Although more research is required on this topic, it is known that stress hormones, such as cortisol, interact with the amygdala. These effects can be facilitating, but also inhibitory: for example, when we feel anxiety the consolidation of memories worsens because the working memory is partially occupied by the stress.

Among the functions of the frontotemporal regions of the brain as a whole are the facilitation of the retention, storage, and retrieval of emotionally charged memories; in turn, feelings of emotional activation promote long-term memory of these events.

Bibliographic references:

• Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36 (2): 129-148.
• D'Argembeau, A., Comblain, C. & Van der Linden, M. (2002). Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for positive, negative, and neutral events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17 (3): pp. 281 - 294.
• Ekman, P. (2004). What does that gesture say? Barcelona: RBA202f: Integral, 2004. ISBN 978-84-7871-202-1.
• Hacking, I. (1996). Memory science, memory politics. In P. Antze & M. Lambek (Eds.), Tense past: Cultural essays in trauma and memory (pp. 67–87). New York & London: Routledge.
• LaBar, K. S. & Head, R. (2006). Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7: 54-64.