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  - Wirkner, Janine
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Schulz, Paul
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - Event-related potentials of emotional and neutral memories
BT  - the role of encoding position and delayed testing
JF  - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research
N2  - Previous research found that memory is not only better for emotional information but also for neutral information that has been encoded in the context of an emotional event. In the present ERP study, we investigated two factors that may influence memory for neutral and emotional items: temporal proximity between emotional and neutral items during encoding, and retention interval (immediate vs. delayed). Forty-nine female participants incidentally encoded 36 unpleasant and 108 neutral pictures (36 neutral pictures preceded an unpleasant picture, 36 followed an unpleasant picture, and 36 neutral pictures were preceded and followed by neutral pictures) and participated in a recognition memory task either immediately (N=24) or 1 week (N=25) after encoding. Results showed better memory for emotional pictures relative to neutral pictures. In accordance, enhanced centroparietal old/new differences (500-900 ms) during recognition were observed for unpleasant compared to neutral pictures, most pronounced for the 1-week interval. Picture position effects, however, were only subtle. During encoding, late positive potentials for neutral pictures were slightly lower for neutral pictures following unpleasant ones, but only at trend level. To summarize, we could replicate and extend previous ERP findings showing that emotionally arousing events are better recollected than neutral events, particularly when memory is tested after longer retention intervals. Picture position during encoding, however, had only small effects on elaborative processing and no effects on memory retrieval.
KW  - attention
KW  - emotion
KW  - ERPs
KW  - memory
KW  - old
KW  - new effect
KW  - serial position effect
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13069
SN  - 0048-5772
SN  - 1469-8986
VL  - 55
IS  - 7
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -