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Previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies have consistently reported that memory is enhanced for associations congruent or incongruent with the structure of prior knowledge, termed as schemas. However, it remains unclear if similar effects arise with emotion-related associations, and whether they depend on the type of emotions. Here, we addressed this question using a novel face-word pair association paradigm combined with fMRI and eye-tracking techniques. In two independent studies, we demonstrated and replicated that both congruency with emotion schemas and emotion category interact to affect associative memory. Overall, memory retrieval was higher for faces from pairs congruent vs. incongruent with emotion schemas, paralleled by a greater recruitment of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during successful encoding. However, emotion schema effects differed across two negative emotion categories. Disgust was remembered better than fear, and only disgust activated left IFG stronger during encoding of congruent vs. incongruent pairs, suggestive of deeper semantic processing for the associations. On the contrary, encoding of congruent fear vs. disgust-related pairs was accompanied with greater activity in right fusiform gyrus (FG), suggesting a stronger sensory processing of faces. In addition, successful memory formation for congruent disgust pairs was associated with a higher pupil dilation index related to sympathetic activation, longer gaze time on words compared to faces, and more gaze switches between paired words and faces. This was reversed for fear-related congruent pairs where the faces attracted longer gaze time (compared to words). Overall, our results provide converging evidence from behavioural, physiological, and neural measures to suggest that congruency with available emotion schemas influence memory associations in a similar manner to semantic schemas. However, these effects vary across distinct emotion categories, pointing to a differential role of semantic processing and visual attention processes in the modulation of memory by disgust and fear, respectively., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

It is widely accepted that people differ in memory performance. The ability to control one's memory depends on multiple factors, including the emotional properties of the memorized material. While it was widely demonstrated that emotion can facilitate memory, it is unclear how emotion modifies our ability to suppress memory. One of the reasons for the lack of consensus among researchers is that individual differences in memory performance were largely neglected in previous studies. We used the directed forgetting paradigm in an fMRI study, in which subjects viewed neutral and emotional words, which they were instructed to remember or to forget. Subsequently, subjects' memory of these words was tested. Finally, they assessed the words on scales of valence, arousal, sadness and fear. We found that memory performance depended on instruction as reflected in the engagement of the lateral prefrontal cortex (lateral PFC), irrespective of emotional properties of words. While the lateral PFC engagement did not differ between neutral and emotional conditions, it correlated with behavioural performance when emotional - as opposed to neutral - words were presented. A deeper understanding of the underlying brain mechanisms is likely to require a study of individual differences in cognitive abilities to suppress memory.

Emotion influences various cognitive processes, such as memory. This beneficial or detrimental effect can be studied with verbal material, yet in this case a broad term of context has to be taken into account. The present work reviews recent literature and proposes that traditional differentiation between semantic and environmental context should be replaced with a novel conceptualization of hippocampus-dependent relational memory and item memory (related to the activations of cuneus and left amygdala). Additionally, instead of list-learning paradigms, words should be memorized in the context of sentences or stories for better control over their meaning. The recent evidence suggests that of particular importance for ecological validity in research paradigms is the presence of communicative and social context of verbal material related to such processes as theory of mind and brain activations in temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. We propose that studying memory of verbal material within context gives a better understanding of enhancing and impairing effects of emotion as well as of the underlying brain mechanisms., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Strong evidence suggests that memory for emotional information is much better than for neutral one. Thus, one may expect that forgetting of emotional information is difficult and requires considerable effort. The aim of this item-method directed forgetting functional magnetic resonance imaging study was to investigate this hypothesis both at behavioral and neural levels. Directed forgetting effects were observed for both neutral and emotionally negative International Affective Picture System images. Moreover, recognition rate of negative to-be-forgotten images was higher than in case of neutral ones. In the study phase, intention to forget and successful forgetting of emotionally negative images were associated with widespread activations extending from the anterior to posterior regions mainly in the right hemisphere, whereas in the case of neutral images, they were associated with just one cluster of activation in the right lingual gyrus. Therefore, forgetting of emotional information seems to be a demanding process that strongly activates a distributed neural network in the right hemisphere. In the test phase, in turn, successfully forgotten images--either neutral or emotionally negative--were associated with virtually no activation, even at the lowered P value threshold. These results suggest that intentional inhibition during encoding may be an efficient strategy to cope with emotionally negative memories.

Previous imaging studies have identified many brain regions activated during reasoning, but there are differences among the findings concerning specific regions engaged in reasoning and the contribution of language areas. Also, little is known about the relation between task complexity and neural activation during reasoning. The present fMRI study investigated brain activity during complex four-term transitive reasoning with abstract material (determinate or partially indeterminate) and compared the resulting images to those obtained during a memorization task. The memory condition required subjects to memorize unrelated elements whereas the reasoning conditions required them to integrate information from premises and to infer relations between elements. After contrasting the two kinds of reasoning conditions with the memory condition we found that right prefrontal and bilateral parietal regions are specifically activated during reasoning. We also demonstrated that different reasoning requirements--the possibility of constructing one (determined reasoning) versus several (undetermined reasoning) models of a situation during task solving--lead to different patterns of brain activity, with higher prefrontal (PFC) activity accompanying undetermined reasoning. We interpret the PFC activity as a reflection of simultaneous maintenance and manipulation of information in reasoning. These findings provide new evidence that specific forms of reasoning (abstract and undetermined) demand recruitment of right PFC and hemispheric coordination and lend new support to the mental model theory of relational reasoning.

In directed-forgetting studies, test items are followed by an instruction either to "remember" or to "forget" (F). Many to-be-forgotten (TBF) stimuli are not retrieved at the recognition phase. However, some subjects are able to correctly recollect a high number of TBF stimuli. We examined whether this ability is reflected in the structure of brain regions involved in memory and the control of retrieval processes. In subjects with high recognition rates for TBF stimuli, voxel-based morphometry revealed increased gray matter (GM) volume in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and the right hippocampus (H). GM volume in these regions correlated positively with the TBF recognition rate. No significant differences were detected in subjects who forgot many TBF stimuli. Our findings indicate that the right H and left VLPFC are of particular relevance in releasing TBF items from inhibition caused by the F instruction.