The retrograde effects of negative emotion on memory for conceptually related events: a registered report.

Emotional events are often remembered better than neutral ones; however, emotion can also spill over and affect our memory for neutral experiences that precede an emotional event. Theories suggest that emotion can retroactively enhance memory for preceding neutral events that are considered high-priority while impairing memory for events deemed low-priority. However, the impact of conceptual relationships (i.e., semantic connections) between preceding neutral information and emotional events on memory for the preceding information has received little attention. This study investigated the influence of conceptual relatedness on the retroactive effects of emotion on memory. Participants sequentially encoded pairs of images that were high or low in conceptual relatedness, each comprising a neutral object followed by either a negative or neutral image. Participants returned the next day for a recognition memory assessment. The results indicated an interactive effect of emotion and conceptual relatedness on memory: In a "discovery" sample, memory was poorer for images preceding conceptually unrelated negative (vs. neutral) images, while the opposite pattern was seen for conceptually related images. In a "replication" sample, these effects were partially replicated, with the former impairment effect statistically observed but not the latter augmentation effect. Hence, conceptual relatedness affects how negative emotion influences memory.

Social cues tip the scales in emotional processing of complex pictures.

Perception of a picture is influenced by the social information and emotional value it carries for the viewer. There are still many unanswered questions about how social and emotional processing are related, but it is clear they involve overlapping brain areas and are cognitively interconnected. Yet studies of emotion processing using standardized picture datasets typically leave the social content in the pictures free to vary. In a few studies where the social content has been measured, it correlated with emotional arousal and valence. Here we tested the association between social and emotional content orthogonally, by selecting a similar number of pictures in four categories varying in presence of nonverbal social cues (e.g., gestures, facial expression, body language) and emotional content (neutral, negative). Across two studies, participants (N = 698 in total) provided three ratings for each picture: social relevance (defined as the self-reported use of social cues to understand the picture), valence, and arousal. Despite our best effort to balance the presence of social cues between negative and neutral pictures, ratings of social relevance were strongly associated with ratings of arousal and, to a lesser extent, with valence. These findings likely reflect the intertwined nature of social and emotional processing, which has implications for the neurobiology underlying them, how these systems develop, and how picture databases are used in research.

Beyond memory: The transcendence of episodic narratives.

Humans have a proclivity for storytelling and narration. Although a lot of attention in the field of episodic memory focuses on the mnemonic content of narratives, memory narratives are not just for conveying the past. Instead, narratives provide a vehicle for meaning-making, social connection, and other complex facets of human cognition and thinking. This short reflection piece discusses the importance of narratives in these diverse realms. In addition, it briefly touches on the role of memory narration in the modern digital era. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Are autistic traits associated with a social-emotional memory bias?

Autistic traits are associated with differential processing of emotional and social cues. By contrast little is known about the relationship of autistic traits to socio-emotional memory, though research suggests an integral relationship between episodic memory processes and psychosocial well-being. Using an experimental paradigm, we tested if autistic traits moderate the effects of negative emotion and social cues on episodic memory (i.e. memory for past events). Young adults (N = 706) with varied levels of self-reported autistic traits (24% in clinical range) encoded images stratified by emotion (negative, neutral) and social cues (social, non-social) alongside a neutral object. After 24 h, item memory for images and associative memory for objects was tested. For item memory, after controlling for anxiety, a small effect emerged whereby a memory-enhancing effect of social cues was reduced as autistic traits increased. For associative memory, memory for pairings between neutral, but not negative, images reduced as autistic traits increased. Results suggest autistic traits are associated with reduced ability to bind neutral items together in memory, potentially impeding nuanced appraisals of past experience. This bias toward more negative, less nuanced memories of past experience may represent a cognitive vulnerability to social and mental health challenges commonly associated with autistic traits and a potential intervention target.

Collaborative imagination synchronizes representations of the future and fosters social connection in the present.

From close friends to people on a first date, imagining a shared future appears fundamental to relationships. Yet, no previous research has conceptualized the act of imagination as a socially constructed process that affects how connected we feel to others. The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events-what we call collaborative imagination. Across two preregistered studies (N = 244), we provide evidence that collaborative imagination of a shared future fosters social connection in novel dyads-beyond imagining a shared future individually or shared experience in general. Subjective ratings and natural language processing of participants' imagined narratives illuminate the representational features of imagined events shaped by collaborative imagination. Together, the present findings have the potential to shift how we view the structure and function of imagination with implications for better understanding interpersonal relationships and collective cognition.

The relationship between environmentally induced emotion and memory for a naturalistic virtual experience.

Emotional stimuli (e.g. words, images) are often remembered better than neutral stimuli. However, little is known about how memory is affected by an environmentally induced emotional state (without any overtly emotional occurrences) - the focus of this study. Participants were randomly assigned to discovery (n = 305) and replication (n = 306) subsamples and viewed a desktop virtual environment before rating their emotions and completing objective (i.e. item, temporal-order, duration) and subjective (e.g. vividness, sensory detail, coherence) memory measures. In both samples, a Partial Least Squares Correlation analysis showed that an emotional state characterised by high negative emotion (i.e. threat, fear, anxiety) and arousal was reliably associated with better memory in both objective (i.e. item) and subjective (i.e. vividness and sensory detail) domains. No reliable associations were observed for any temporal memory measures (objective or subjective). Thus, an environmentally induced state of negative emotion corresponds with enhanced memory for indices of episodic memory pertaining to "what" happened, but not necessarily "when" it happened.

The effects of emotion on retrospective duration memory using virtual reality.

Our memories for temporal duration may be colored by the emotions we experience during an event. While emotion generally enhances some aspects of memory, temporal duration has been shown to be particularly susceptible to emotion-induced distortions. However, prior work has faced difficulty when studying this phenomenon, having to make some trade-offs on ecological validity or experimental control. Here, we sought to bridge this gap by studying the effects of emotion on temporal duration memory using virtual reality. In the present study, a final sample of 69 participants experienced a series of negative-emotional and neutral worlds within virtual reality. Following this, participants provided ratings of emotionality (arousal, valence, pleasantness) and retrospective duration estimates (i.e., remembered time). We hypothesized that negative events would be recalled as having a greater duration than neutral events (H1). We additionally hypothesized that negative, but not neutral, events would be recalled as being longer than the true duration (H2). The results supported H1 while failing to provide evidence in support of H2. Together, the results bolster the importance of emotion, especially negative emotion, in shaping how we remember the temporal unfolding of the past.

The shared and unique neural correlates of personal semantic, general semantic, and episodic memory.

One of the most common distinctions in long-term memory is that between semantic (i.e., general world knowledge) and episodic (i.e., recollection of contextually specific events from one's past). However, emerging cognitive neuroscience data suggest a surprisingly large overlap between the neural correlates of semantic and episodic memory. Moreover, personal semantic memories (i.e., knowledge about the self and one's life) have been studied little and do not easily fit into the standard semantic-episodic dichotomy. Here, we used fMRI to record brain activity while 48 participants verified statements concerning general facts, autobiographical facts, repeated events, and unique events. In multivariate analysis, all four types of memory involved activity within a common network bilaterally (e.g., frontal pole, paracingulate gyrus, medial frontal cortex, middle/superior temporal gyrus, precuneus, posterior cingulate, angular gyrus) and some areas of the medial temporal lobe. Yet the four memory types differentially engaged this network, increasing in activity from general to autobiographical facts, from autobiographical facts to repeated events, and from repeated to unique events. Our data are compatible with a component process model, in which declarative memory types rely on different weightings of the same elementary processes, such as perceptual imagery, spatial features, and self-reflection.

Factors perpetuating functional cognitive symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury.

INTRODUCTION: Self-reported memory difficulties (forgetting familiar names, misplacing objects) often persist long after a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), despite normal neuropsychological test performance. This clinical presentation may be a manifestation of a functional cognitive disorder (FCD). Several mechanisms underlying FCD have been proposed, including metacognitive impairment, memory perfectionism, and misdirected attention, as well as depression or anxiety-related explanations. This study aims to explore these candidate perpetuating factors in mTBI, to advance our understanding of why memory symptoms frequently persist following mTBI. METHODS: A cross-sectional study of 67 adults (n = 39 with mTBI mean = 25 months ago and n = 28 healthy controls). Participants completed standardized questionnaires (including the Functional Memory Disorder Inventory), a metacognitive task (to quantify discrepancies between their trial-by-trial accuracy and confidence), and a brief neuropsychological test battery. We assessed candidate mechanisms in two ways: (1) between-groups, comparing participants with mTBI to healthy controls, and (2) within-group, examining their associations with functional memory symptom severity (FMDI) in the mTBI group. RESULTS: Participants with mTBI performed similarly to controls on objective measures of memory ability but reported experiencing much more frequent memory lapses in daily life. Contrary to expectations, metacognitive efficiency did not differentiate the mTBI and control groups and was not associated with functional memory symptoms. Memory perfectionism was strongly associated with greater functional memory symptoms among participants with mTBI but did not differ between groups when accounting for age. Depression and checking behaviors produced consistent results across between-groups and within-group analyses: these factors were greater in the mTBI group compared to the control group and were associated with greater functional memory symptoms within the mTBI group. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights promising (e.g., depression, checking behaviors) and unlikely (e.g., metacognitive impairment) mechanisms underlying functional memory symptoms after mTBI, to guide future research and treatment.

Fade In, Fade Out: Do Shifts in Visual Perspective Predict the Consistency of Real-World Memories?

Memories of our personal past are not exact accounts of what occurred. Instead, memory reconstructs the past in adaptive-though not always faithful-ways. Using a naturalistic design, we asked how the visual perspective adopted in the mind's eye when recalling the past-namely, an "own eyes" versus "observer" perspective-relates to the stability of autobiographical memories. We hypothesized that changes in visual perspective over time would predict poorer consistency of memories. Young adults (N = 178) rated the phenomenology of and freely recalled self-selected memories of everyday events at two time points (10 weeks apart). Multilevel linear modeling revealed, as expected, that greater shifts in visual perspective over time predicted lower memory consistency, particularly for emotional details. Our results offer insight into the factors that predict the fidelity of memories for everyday events. Moreover, our results may elucidate new metrics that are useful in interpreting eyewitness testimony or experiences relayed in clinical contexts.

Emotion in the mind's eye: Imagination for adaptive cognition.

In a complex world, we are constantly faced with environmental stimuli that shape our moment-to-moment experiences. But just as rich and complex as the external world is the internal milieu-our imagination. Imagination offers a powerful vehicle for playing out hypothetical experiences in the mind's eye. It allows us to mentally time travel to behold what the future might bring, including our greatest desires or fears. Indeed, imagined experiences tend to be emotion-laden. How and why are humans capable of this remarkable feat? Based on psychological findings, we highlight the importance of imagination for emotional aspects of cognition and behavior, namely in the generation and regulation of emotions. Based on recent cognitive neuroscience work, we identify putative neural networks that are most critical for emotional imagination, with a major focus on the default mode network. Finally, we briefly highlight the possible functional implications of individual differences in imagination. Overall, we hope to address why humans have the capacity to simulate hypothetical emotional experiences and how this ability can be harnessed in adaptive (and sometimes maladaptive) ways. We end by discussing open questions.

Verbal recall in amnesia: Does scene construction matter?

The hippocampus plays a critical role in episodic memory and imagination. One theoretical model posits that the hippocampus is important for scene construction, namely, the ability to conjure and maintain a scene-based representation in one's mind. To test one idea put forth by this view, we examined whether amnesia is associated with more severe impairment in memory when the to-be-remembered content places high demands on scene construction. To do so, we examined free recall performance for abstract (i.e., low scene imagery) and concrete, high scene-imagery single words in seven amnesic patients with hippocampal lesions and concomitant scene-construction deficits, and compared their performance to demographically matched healthy controls. As expected, amnesic patients were severely impaired in their free recall performance; however, their impairment did not differ as a function of word type. That is, their impairment was equally severe for words that evoke high versus low scene imagery. These findings suggest that the role of the hippocampus in verbal memory extends to content that does not place high demands on scene construction. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Brief diesel exhaust exposure acutely impairs functional brain connectivity in humans: a randomized controlled crossover study.

BACKGROUND: While it is known that exposure to traffic-related air pollution causes an enormous global toll on human health, neurobiological underpinnings therein remain elusive. The study addresses this gap in knowledge. METHODS: We performed the first controlled human exposure study using functional MRI with an efficient order-randomized double-blind crossover study of diesel exhaust (DE) and control (filtered air; FA) in 25 healthy adults (14 males, 11 females; 19-49 years old; no withdrawals). Analyses were carried out using a mixed effects model in FLAME. Z (Gaussianised T/F) statistic images were thresholded non-parametrically using clusters determined by Z > 2.3 and a (corrected) cluster significance threshold of p = 0.05. RESULTS: All 25 adults went through the exposures and functional MRI imaging were collected. Exposure to DE yielded a decrease in functional connectivity compared to exposure to FA, shown through the comparison of DE and FA in post-exposure measurement of functional connectivity. CONCLUSION: We observed short-term pollution-attributable decrements in default mode network functional connectivity. Decrements in brain connectivity causes many detrimental effects to the human body so this finding should guide policy change in air pollution exposure regulation. TRIAL REGISTRATION: University of British Columbia Clinical Research Ethics Board (# H12-03025), Vancouver Coastal Health Ethics Board (# V12-03025), and Health Canada's Research Ethics Board (# 2012-0040).

The underwood project: A virtual environment for eliciting ambiguous threat.

Threatening environments can be unpredictable in many different ways. The nature of threats, their timing, and their locations in a scene can all be uncertain, even when one is acutely aware of being at risk. Prior research demonstrates that both temporal unpredictability and spatial uncertainty of threats elicit a distinctly anxious psychological response. In the paradigm presented here, we further explore other facets of ambiguous threat via an environment in which there are no concrete threats, predictable or otherwise, but which nevertheless elicits a building sense of danger. By incorporating both psychological research and principles of emotional game design, we constructed this world and then tested its effects in three studies. In line with our goals, participants experienced the environment as creepy and unpredictable. Their subjective and physiological response to the world rose and fell in line with the presentation of ambiguously threatening ambient cues. Exploratory analyses further suggest that this ambiguously threatening experience influenced memory for the virtual world and its underlying narrative. Together the data demonstrate that naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively elicit a multifaceted experience of ambiguous threat with subjective and cognitive consequences.

Social value at a distance: Higher identification with all of humanity is associated with reduced social discounting.

How much we value the welfare of others has critical implications for the collective good. Yet, it is unclear what leads people to make more or less equal decisions about the welfare of those from whom they are socially distant. The current research sought to explore the psychological mechanisms that might underlie welfare judgements across social distance. Here, a social discounting paradigm was used to measure the tendency for the value of a reward to be discounted as the social distance of its recipient increased. Across two cohorts (one discovery, one replication), we found that a more expansive identity with all of humanity was associated with reduced social discounting. Additionally, we investigated the specificity of this association by examining whether this relationship extended to delay discounting, the tendency for the value of a reward to be discounted as the temporal distance to its receipt increases. Our findings suggest that the observed association with identity was unique to social discounting, thus underscoring a distinction in value-based decision-making processes across distances in time and across social networks. As data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also considered how stress associated with this global threat might influence welfare judgements across social distances. We found that, even after controlling for COVID-19 related stress, correlations between identity and social discounting held. Together, these findings elucidate the psychological processes that are associated with a more equal distribution of generosity.

Episodic memory through a social and emotional lens.

Negative emotion enhances item memory but may reduce associative memory. Social information may also enhance memory, yet how social and emotional cues combine to affect memory for focal and surrounding details is unknown. Gender differences may also exist, but whether women and men encode and remember negative and social information differently is unclear. This study examines how social information contributes to or interacts with emotion to influence item and associative memory, and whether gender plays a role in how social and/or emotional information is recognized. Discovery and replication samples (N = 706) were recruited. Stimuli included (1) images with varying social and emotional content categorized into four conditions: negative social, negative nonsocial, neutral social, neutral nonsocial and (2) neutral images of objects paired with target stimuli to assess associative memory. Participants viewed the image pairings (Encoding). Twenty-four hours later, item and associative recognition memory were tested. Item recognition memory was better for negative vs. neutral and social vs. nonsocial images. By contrast, associative recognition memory was worse for negative vs. neutral, but better for social vs. nonsocial images. Finally, women demonstrated similar item memory performance compared to men but better associative recognition memory performance overall compared to men. Emotional and social cues impart distinct effects on how we form holistic episodic memories, highlighting the importance of considering these critical factors when striving to understand how and what we remember. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating the impact of healthy aging on memory for temporal duration and order.

Temporal information, including information about temporal order and duration, is a fundamental component of event sequence memory. While previous research has demonstrated that aging can have a detrimental effect on memory for temporal order, there has been limited insight into the effect of aging on memory for durations, particularly within the context of sequences. In the current study, neurologically healthy young and older participants were administered two temporal match-mismatch tasks: one in which they were instructed on each trial to compare the temporal order or duration information of stimulus sequences presented first in a study phase and then, after a short delay, in a test phase (event sequence task); and a second in which participants were required to compare single durations or sequences of durations across study and test phases of each trial (pinwheel task). Consistent with the literature, the older participants were significantly poorer compared to their younger counterparts at making temporal order match-mismatch judgments in the event sequence task. In addition to this, data from both tasks suggested that the older adults were also less accurate at match-mismatch judgments based on duration information, with tentative evidence from the pinwheel task to suggest that this age-related effect was most prominent when the duration information was presented within a sequence. We suggest that age-related changes to medial temporal and frontal lobe function may contribute to changes in memory for temporal information in older adults, given the importance of these regions to event sequence memory.

Simulating the best and worst of times: the powers and perils of emotional simulation.

We are remarkably capable of simulating events that we have never experienced. These simulated events often paint an emotional picture to behold, such as the best and worst possible outcomes that we might face. This review synthesises dispersed literature exploring the role of emotion in simulation. Drawing from work that suggests that simulations can influence our preferences, decision-making, and prosociality, we argue for a critical role of emotion in informing the consequences of simulation. We further unpack burgeoning evidence suggesting that the effects of emotional simulation transcend the laboratory. We propose avenues by which emotional simulation may be harnessed for both personal and collective good in applied contexts. We conclude by offering important future directions.

Hippocampal Contribution to Probabilistic Feedback Learning: Modeling Observation- and Reinforcement-based Processes.

Simple probabilistic reinforcement learning is recognized as a striatum-based learning system, but in recent years, has also been associated with hippocampal involvement. This study examined whether such involvement may be attributed to observation-based learning (OL) processes, running in parallel to striatum-based reinforcement learning. A computational model of OL, mirroring classic models of reinforcement-based learning (RL), was constructed and applied to the neuroimaging data set of Palombo, Hayes, Reid, and Verfaellie [2019. Hippocampal contributions to value-based learning: Converging evidence from fMRI and amnesia. Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19(3), 523-536]. Results suggested that OL processes may indeed take place concomitantly to reinforcement learning and involve activation of the hippocampus and central orbitofrontal cortex. However, rather than independent mechanisms running in parallel, the brain correlates of the OL and RL prediction errors indicated collaboration between systems, with direct implication of the hippocampus in computations of the discrepancy between the expected and actual reinforcing values of actions. These findings are consistent with previous accounts of a role for the hippocampus in encoding the strength of observed stimulus-outcome associations, with updating of such associations through striatal reinforcement-based computations. In addition, enhanced negative RL prediction error signaling was found in the anterior insula with greater use of OL over RL processes. This result may suggest an additional mode of collaboration between the OL and RL systems, implicating the error monitoring network.