HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Mather, M. Articles by Johnson, M. K. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Mather, M. Articles by Johnson, M. K.

Emotional Arousal Can Impair Feature Binding in Working Memory

¹ University of California, Santa Cruz, ² Yale University

Reprint requests should be sent to Mara Mather, Psychology Department, University of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, or via e-mail: mather@ucsc.edu.

To investigate whether emotional arousal affects memorial feature binding, we had participants complete a short-term source-monitoring task—remembering the locations of four different pictures over a brief delay. On each trial, the four pictures were all either high arousal, medium arousal, or low arousal. Memory for picture–location conjunctions decreased as arousal increased. In addition, source memory for the location of negative pictures was worse among participants with higher depression scores. Two subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments showed that relative to low-arousal trials, high- and medium-arousal trials resulted in greater activity in areas associated with visual processing (fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus/middle occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus) and less activity in superior precentral gyrus and the precentral–superior temporal intersect. These findings suggest that arousal (and perhaps negative valence for depressed people) recruits attention to items thereby disrupting working memory processes that help bind features together.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				E. A. Kensinger, R. J. Garoff-Eaton, and D. L. Schacter How negative emotion enhances the visual specificity of a memory. J. Cogn. Neurosci., November 1, 2007; 19(11): 1872 - 1887. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]