TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Wirkner, Janine
A1  - Wendt, Julia
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - Establishment of emotional memories is mediated by vagal nerve activation
BT  - evidence from noninvasive taVNS
JF  - The journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
N2  - Emotional memories are better remembered than neutral ones, but the mechanisms leading to this memory bias are not well under-stood in humans yet. Based on animal research, it is suggested that the memory-enhancing effect of emotion is based on central nor-adrenergic release, which is triggered by afferent vagal nerve activation. To test the causal link between vagus nerve activation and emotional memory in humans, we applied continuous noninvasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) during exposure to emotional arousing and neutral scenes and tested subsequent, long-term recognition memory after 1 week. We found that taVNS, compared with sham, increased recollection-based memory performance for emotional, but not neutral, material. These findings were complemented by larger recollection-related brain potentials (parietal ERP Old/New effect) during retrieval of emotional scenes encoded under taVNS, compared with sham. Furthermore, brain potentials recorded during encoding also revealed that taVNS facilitated early attentional discrimination between emotional and neutral scenes. Extending animal research, our behavioral and neu-ral findings confirm a modulatory influence of the vagus nerve in emotional memory formation in humans.
KW  - emotion
KW  - ERPs
KW  - memory
KW  - Old
KW  - New effect
KW  - LPP
KW  - vagus nerve
KW  - tVNS
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2329-20.2021
SN  - 1529-2401
VL  - 41
IS  - 36
SP  - 7636
EP  - 7648
PB  - Society for Neuroscience
CY  - Washington, DC
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Wendt, Julia
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - The Role of Interoceptive Sensibility and Emotional Conceptualization for the Experience of Emotions
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - The theory of constructed emotions suggests that different psychological components, including core affect (mental and neural representations of bodily changes), and conceptualization (meaning-making based on prior experiences and semantic knowledge), are involved in the formation of emotions. However, little is known about their role in experiencing emotions. In the current study, we investigated how individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization (as potential correlates of these components) interact to moderate three important aspects of emotional experiences: emotional intensity (strength of emotion felt), arousal (degree of activation), and granularity (ability to differentiate emotions with precision). To this end, participants completed a series of questionnaires assessing interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization and underwent two emotion experience tasks, which included standardized material (emotion differentiation task; ED task) and self-experienced episodes (day reconstruction method; DRM). Correlational analysis showed that individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization were related to each other. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed two independent factors that were referred to as sensibility and monitoring. The Sensibility factor, interpreted as beliefs about the accuracy of an individual in detecting internal physiological and emotional states, predicted higher granularity for negative words. The Monitoring factor, interpreted as the tendency to focus on the internal states of an individual, was negatively related to emotional granularity and intensity. Additionally, Sensibility scores were more strongly associated with greater well-being and adaptability measures than Monitoring scores. Our results indicate that independent processes underlying individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization contribute to emotion experiencing.
KW  - emotion
KW  - granularity
KW  - emotional intensity
KW  - well-being
KW  - adaptability
KW  - interoceptive sensibility
KW  - interoception
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712418
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 12
SP  - 1
EP  - 15
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne, Schweiz
ER  -