Emotional Memory Essay Example for Free

Emotional Memory EssayEmotional shop pertains to an individuals recollection of incidents that have occurred in the past. The mechanism behind much(prenominal) strong retention is mainly based on the emotions that are associated with that particular event, resulting in a increased level of vigilance that facilitates encoding of the event in the memory of an individual. Emotional memory is also involved in ruminations of the occurrence, regardless of the length of time that has already passed away since the substantial event.This kind of memory can be distinguished from other neurobiological concepts of memory because its retention is very strong due to the influence of emotions, which technically magnifies inface information of the incident. Research has shown that emotional memory is imprinted in the cortical region of the brain. This description is supported by observances that several neural activities occur in the cortex, consequentlyly facilitating memory retention. Several studies have indicated that emotional memory involves two major processes, namely encoding and post-encoding.The first process of encoding involves the heightened level of attention of an individual during the existing event, while post-encoding pertains to the consolidation of the enlarge of the event after the actual incident, coupled with enhancement that is triggered by the emotions that were set off at that time. One prime physical exertion of an emotional memory is the vivid recall of an mishap 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 al vi rtually died at that time. It has been suggested that evolution also plays a role in emotional memory, wherein the brain of human beings has acquired the capacity to retain details of an event in order to survive that particular incident.It whitethorn thus be possible that through fear, early primates and other higher mammals may have learned to stay 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 disquiet that is related 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 have mechanism behind the retrieval of memories associated with a particular incident based on emotional settings still remains elusive up to this date. The unique have of storage for a prolonged period of time further complicates the pathw ay and several analysts have attempted to address 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 specific incident in the past. retention of information, or encoding, is simply one component of the entire emotional memory pathway yet the retrieval of specific information is essential in find out that the entire process has been completed. It has also been suggested that emotional memory is easier to access over the neutral events, and this is also partly due to the role of amygdala, which influences how the genus Hippocampus functions at such events. In addition to the emotional influence, sleep also sways the brain to remember specific incidents, wherein the bill of sleep can result in a decreed or negative condition for memory.According to Sterpenic et al. (2007), memory is influenced by sleep through the imposition of neural correlates. Through the a pplication of functional magnetic ringing imaging ( fMRI), a coincidence of neural connections was examined among subjects who were able to sleep for a sufficient amount of time and those who were deprived of sleep. The investigating was designed towards a gunpoint 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 received enough hours of sleep had the ability to remember the positive events that occurred.On the other hand, an enkindle 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 observation gathered by neurobiologists regarding emotional memory was that several regions of the brain were respo nsible in retaining such details and emotions. The two major brains areas involved in emotional memory were the genus Hippocampus and the cortex.Specific regions of the cortex that were responsible for emotional memory include 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 scanning 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 will only be stored in the hippocampus if an individual receives enough sleep. S uch 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 better 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 presence of emotions increased the likelihood that an individual will retain the details of the incident.The emotional memory tested in this study showed that the actual area of brain involved in this mechanism is the left sid e 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 cognizance 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 unreached 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