This week’s readings focused specifically on picking apart the complexity of memory and the structures within the brain that are associated with conscious and unconscious remembering. In these readings the authors start to unwind the different forms of memory and their inherent connection to emotion.

In the first three chapters of James McGaugh’s Memory and Emotion he emphasizes the importance of memory in our lives, not only as a form of self-kept documentation of our own experiences but also as a necessary part of learning from those experiences. The ability to consolidate and store our current experiences is essential to learning. Without this ability, functioning from day to day is extremely difficult. H.M, a patient whose case is one of the most well studied cases of memory loss, has provided some of the most critical aspects of memory. In order to relieve his seizures his entire temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, amygdala and the caudate. This resulted in severe memory impairment, which prevented him from making new memories. However, other tests with H.M. showed that some aspects of memory and learning are still intact, revealing the fact that the hippocampus is not necessarily the only region of the brain in which implicit learning takes place. One of McGaugh’s main focuses was on the fact that memory has different forms, more specifically, short term and long term memory.

LeDoux links memory more directly to emotions and emotional responses. In chapter six he talks about the connection between a stimulus and an emotion. He uses the example of a rat that is placed in a cage, an electric shot to the feet is administered, paired with a sound. The rat, when hearing the sound produces the same emotional response that it would have if the shock was being administered. ‘Fear conditioning’ is absolutely necessary for survival, without it our defense system is nil. This greatly supports the original idea that emotional responses were originally used for survival. When approached by a predator the autonomic nervous system is activated, producing a physical response in defense. LeDoux also talks about the selectivity of memory. In his findings it seems that an individual much more likely to remember something that evoked a strong emotional response rather than an event that has no emotional significance. The brain is also selective in what aspects of the memory are clearer than others. Memories are also not exact copies of an event. It seems most likely that the act of remembering an event produces a similar emotional response as to when you were experiencing it, which has the potential to influence your recollection of that event. These holes in memory are things I found the most intriguing. Evolutionarily, what is the advantage to only remembering certain details about an event? What is the advantage to exaggerating the details?

The study done by Dolcos, LaBar and Cabeza focused specifically on the ability to recall emotional or neural pictures over a period of one year. They were specifically looking for brain activity within the amygdala. They took nine young female adults and selected neural and emotional images. Each image was shown as the MRI machine took an image of their brain. They were told to rate the picture from 1-3, 1 being unpleasant and 3 pleasant. One year later the test was repeated with new and old images. The subjects were asked to press ‘know,’ ‘remember’ or ‘new.’ The ending results yielded (as predicted) a greater recognition and emotional reading than the neutral ones. Evolutionarily, it seems obvious that we should develop in a way that we would be more likely to remember the emotionally charged events in our lives. If memory is the ‘consequence of learning from an experience’ as James McGaugh has said, we would do best to learn from those experiences where we felt the most.