Emotional Memory Essay Example for Free

ablaze Memory EssayEmotional entrepot pertains to an individuals recollection of calamitys that hold occurred in the past. The instrument behind such fuddled retention is mainly based on the emotions that are associated with that particular(prenominal) event, resulting in a increased level of attention that facilitates encode of the event in the memory of an individual. Emotional memory is also gnarly in ruminations of the occurrence, regardless of the length of cartridge holder that has already passed away since the unquestion able-bodied event.This broad of memory idler be distinguished from other neurobiological concepts of memory because its retention is very strong due to the influence of emotions, which technically magnifies lucubrate of the possibility. Research has shown that delirious memory is imprinted in the cortical section of the brain. This description is supported by observations that several neural activities occur in the pallium, thus facili tating memory retention. several(prenominal) studies withstand indicated that emotional memory involves two major servicees, namely encoding and post-encoding.The first process of encoding involves the heightened level of attention of an individual during the actual event, while post-encoding pertains to the consolidation of the expand of the event afterwards the actual consequent, coupled with enhancement that is triggered by the emotions that were set off at that time. One prime example of an emotional memory is the vivid recall of an accident that is associated with physical injury and blood. Regardless of the length of time that the incident has occurred, the individual who was involved in the accident is still capable of remembering the accident even after several years.One complication of emotional memory is that an individual finds it difficult to dissociate his emotions with regards to a particular incident. It is thus extremely hard for an individual to go back to the site of an accident if this person around died at that time. It has been suggested that evolution also processs a role in emotional memory, wherein the brain of human beings has acquired the contentedness to retain details of an event in order to survive that particular incident.It may thus be assertable that through fear, early primates and other higher mammals may have learned to check away from predators and other harmful environmental components in order to survive in the wild. These species may have adapted such modes of memory by being subjected to extreme discomfort or pain that is think to incidents such as toxin exposure or predation and thus their perception for harmful conditions may have been imprinted in their brains and possibly passed on to their offspring.The exact mechanism behind the retrieval of memories associated with a particular incident based on emotional settings still remains elusive up to this date. The unique feature of entrepot for a prolonged per iod of time further complicates the pathway and several analysts have attempted to come up to this question. Neurobiologists have suggested that emotional memory may be act as a complete process unless an individual is able to retrieve the information associated with a proper(postnominal) incident in the past.Storage of information, or encoding, is simply one component of the entire emotional memory pathway yet the retrieval of specialised information is essential in determining that the entire process has been completed. It has also been suggested that emotional memory is easier to access code over the neutral events, and this is also partly due to the role of amygdala, which influences how the hippocampus functions at such events. In addition to the emotional influence, sleep also sways the brain to remember specific incidents, wherein the amount of sleep can result in a positive or negative condition for memory.According to Sterpenic et al. (2007), memory is influenced by sle ep through the imposition of neural correlates. Through the application of functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI), a comparison of neural connections was examined among subjects who were able to sleep for a sufficient amount of time and those who were deprive of sleep. The investigation was designed towards a stage wherein the subjects were allowed to undergo post-encoding, which is one of the two stages of emotional memory. The investigation showed that subjects who have enough hours of sleep had the ability to remember the positive events that occurred.On the other hand, an interesting observation came from those subjects who were subjected to a particular negative event. They observed that regardless of sufficiency or lack of sleep, the subject participant was able to retain the details of the negative event, most probably through the characteristic emotion that was generated from the negative stimuli. another(prenominal) observation gathered by neurobiologists regarding emotional memory was that several regions of the brain were responsible in retaining such details and emotions. The two major brains areas involved in emotional memory were the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex.Specific regions of the cortex that were responsible for emotional memory included the prefrontal cortex, which is also involved in criminality. It seems that negative emotions, such as that involved in emotional memory, are largely stored in this region of the brain. Moreover, fMRI see showed a functional connection between these two regions of the brain and the combinatorial effect of these regions was magnified when the incident is featured with negative stimuli or emotions. It is interesting to know that sleep may also have a selective effect on the memory of an individual.The amygdala was observed to only stimulate the hippocampus for encoding when a negative event has occurred and this happens with or without sleep. On the other hand, a happy incident depart only be stored in the hippocampus if an individual receives enough sleep. Such selective storage of details may be largely influenced by emotions during that particular event, and not simply by the amount of time that an individual was able to sleep. Such kinds of research investigations are thus important in the providing a break up understanding of how emotions influence an individuals memory and ultimately, ones mental condition.It has also been shown that emotions play a major role in the storage of details in the brain. In an investigation that involved manipulation of the context of emotion of subject participants, the activity of the neural networks in the brain was examined. A specific memory tested also allowed the comparison of retrieval capacities of the brain and the research conducted by Smith et al. (2005) showed that the strawman of emotions increased the likelihood that an individual will retain the details of the incident.The emotional memory tested in this study showe d that the actual area of brain involved in this mechanism is the left side of the amygdala, as well as the left side of the frontotemporal region of the cortex. The study also showed that the right side of the amydala and the frontotemporal cortex was not capable enough of storing details of a specific incident, regardless of its coupling to emotions. It is thus possible that when an individual has damaged the left side of his brain, then it is impossible for him to recall any other details of his past.It should also be understood that cognition is mainly based on memory as well as emotion, yet for several yesterday there were not attempts performed into looking into the finer details of the pathway. In addition, there were also only a few reported regarding the interaction of the amygdala and the cortex and on how these two regions responded to each others messages. The advent of high definition imaging technologies such as the magnetic resonance imaging allowed the visualization of internal regions of the brain that were perceived to be unreachable by an other analytical means.ReferencesSmith, A. P. , Henson, R. N. , Rugg, M. D. and Dolan, R. J. (2005). Modulation of retrieval processing reflects accuracy of emotional source memory. Learning and Memory, 12, 472479. Sterpenich, V. , Albouy, G. , Boly, M. , Vandewalle, G. , Darsaud, A. , Balteau, E. , Dang-Vu, T. T. , Desseilles. M. , DArgembeau, A. , Gais, S. , Rauchs, G. , Schabus, M. , Degueldre, C. , Luxen, A. , Collette, F. , Maquet, P. (2007). Sleep-related hippocampo-cortical interplay during emotional memory recollection. PloS Bi