Independent effects of emotional arousal and reward anticipation on episodic memory formation

TY - JOUR

T1 - Independent effects of emotional arousal and reward anticipation on episodic memory formation

AU - Gieske, Astrid

AU - Sommer, Tobias

N1 - © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

PY - 2023/4/4

Y1 - 2023/4/4

N2 - Events that elicit emotional arousal or are associated with reward are more likely remembered. Emotional arousal activates the amygdala and the central noradrenergic system, whereas reward anticipation results in an activity in the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system. The activation of both pathways enhances memory formation in the hippocampus where their effects are based on similar neural substrates, e.g. tagging of active hippocampal synapses. Moreover, emotional arousal and reward anticipation both enhance attention, which can also affect memory formation. In addition, both neuromodulators interact on the cellular level. Therefore, we tested in the current functional magnetic resonance imaging study whether simultaneously occurring emotional arousal and reward anticipation might have interacting effects on memory formation. We did not find evidence for such an interaction, neither on the behavioral nor on the neural level. Our results further suggest that reward anticipation enhances memory formation rather by an increase in anticipation-related arousal-reflected in activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-and not dopaminergic midbrain activity. Accompanying behavioral experiments indicated that the effect of reward anticipation on memory is (i) caused at least to some extent by anticipating the speeded response to obtain the reward and not by the valance of the outcome and (ii) can be observed already immediately after encoding, i.e. before consolidation.

AB - Events that elicit emotional arousal or are associated with reward are more likely remembered. Emotional arousal activates the amygdala and the central noradrenergic system, whereas reward anticipation results in an activity in the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system. The activation of both pathways enhances memory formation in the hippocampus where their effects are based on similar neural substrates, e.g. tagging of active hippocampal synapses. Moreover, emotional arousal and reward anticipation both enhance attention, which can also affect memory formation. In addition, both neuromodulators interact on the cellular level. Therefore, we tested in the current functional magnetic resonance imaging study whether simultaneously occurring emotional arousal and reward anticipation might have interacting effects on memory formation. We did not find evidence for such an interaction, neither on the behavioral nor on the neural level. Our results further suggest that reward anticipation enhances memory formation rather by an increase in anticipation-related arousal-reflected in activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-and not dopaminergic midbrain activity. Accompanying behavioral experiments indicated that the effect of reward anticipation on memory is (i) caused at least to some extent by anticipating the speeded response to obtain the reward and not by the valance of the outcome and (ii) can be observed already immediately after encoding, i.e. before consolidation.

U2 - 10.1093/cercor/bhac359

DO - 10.1093/cercor/bhac359

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 36205480

VL - 33

SP - 4527

EP - 4541

JO - CEREB CORTEX

JF - CEREB CORTEX

SN - 1047-3211

IS - 8

ER -