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Abstract:
The relationship between limbic activity and emotional
reactions to and enhanced memory for emotional material has been
established for nonverbal stimuli. However, it is unknown whether
this relationship holds for verbal stimuli. The goal of the current
study was to use fMRI to examine the neural correlates of emotional
reactions to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral verbal and nonverbal
material and to identify brain regions whose activity was
correlated with emotional memory. Results (N=14, random-effects)
showed substantial overlap between reactions to negative verbal and
nonverbal stimuli in limbic ROIs (amygdala, hippocampal region).
Positive words activated the amygdala whereas positive pictures
primarily activated the hippocampal region. Episodic memory for the
emotional stimuli, assessed immediately after scanning, was
correlated with amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex activity during
encoding. Importantly, because memory was assessed only minutes
after encoding, these results suggest that the modulatory role of
the amygdala on memory is not limited to long-term consolidation,
but also extends to modulating encoding processes such as
attention. These are the first findings that the amygdala is
activated by positive and negative verbal stimuli and that the
limbic neural response to verbal and nonverbal negative stimuli is
similar. The memory results extend previous findings to verbal
stimuli and suggest that the amygdala modulates both memory
encoding and consolidation processes. Support: McDonnell-Pew
#97-24.
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