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Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Dolcos, F; Cabeza, R
Published in: Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience
September 2002

Emotional events tend to be remembered better than nonemotional events. We investigated this phenomenon by measuring two event-related potential (ERP) effects: the emotion effect (more positive ERPs for pleasant or unpleasant stimuli than for neutral stimuli) and the subsequent memory effect (more positive ERPs for subsequently remembered items than for subsequently forgotten items). ERPs were measured while subjects rated the emotional content of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. As was expected, subsequent recall was better for pleasant and unpleasant pictures than for neutral pictures. The emotion effect was sensitive to arousal in parietal electrodes and to both arousal and valence in frontocentral electrodes. The subsequent memory effect at centroparietal electrodes was greater for emotional pictures than for neutral pictures during an early epoch (400-600 msec). This result suggests that emotional information has privileged access to processing resources, possibly leading to better memory formation.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience

DOI

EISSN

1531-135X

ISSN

1530-7026

Publication Date

September 2002

Volume

2

Issue

3

Start / End Page

252 / 263

Related Subject Headings

  • Mental Processes
  • Memory
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Evoked Potentials
  • Emotions
  • Electroencephalography
  • Brain Mapping
  • Brain
 

Citation

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MLA
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Dolcos, F., & Cabeza, R. (2002). Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2(3), 252–263. https://doi.org/10.3758/cabn.2.3.252
Dolcos, Florin, and Roberto Cabeza. “Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures.Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 2, no. 3 (September 2002): 252–63. https://doi.org/10.3758/cabn.2.3.252.
Dolcos F, Cabeza R. Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience. 2002 Sep;2(3):252–63.
Dolcos, Florin, and Roberto Cabeza. “Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures.Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 2, no. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 252–63. Epmc, doi:10.3758/cabn.2.3.252.
Dolcos F, Cabeza R. Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience. 2002 Sep;2(3):252–263.
Journal cover image

Published In

Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience

DOI

EISSN

1531-135X

ISSN

1530-7026

Publication Date

September 2002

Volume

2

Issue

3

Start / End Page

252 / 263

Related Subject Headings

  • Mental Processes
  • Memory
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Evoked Potentials
  • Emotions
  • Electroencephalography
  • Brain Mapping
  • Brain