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Fearful expressions enhance recognition memory: electrophysiological evidence
- Source :
- Acta psychologica. 139(1)
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Facial expressions play a key role in affective and social behavior. However, the temporal dynamics of the brain responses to emotional faces remain still unclear, in particular an open question is at what stage of face processing expressions might influence encoding and recognition memory. To try and answer this question we recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited in an old/new recognition task. A novel aspect of the present design was that whereas faces were presented during the study phase with either a happy, fearful or neutral expression, they were always neutral during the memory retrieval task. The ERP results showed three main findings: An enhanced early fronto-central positivity for faces encoded as fearful, both during the study and the retrieval phase. During encoding subsequent memory (Dm effect) was influenced by emotion. At retrieval the early components P100 and N170 were modulated by the emotional expression of the face at the encoding phase. Finally, the later ERP components related to recognition memory were modulated by the previously encoded facial expressions. Overall, these results suggest that face recognition is modulated by top-down influences from brain areas associated with emotional memory, enhancing encoding and retrieval in particular for fearful emotional expressions.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Electroencephalography
Facial recognition system
Task (project management)
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Encoding (memory)
Developmental and Educational Psychology
medicine
Humans
Emotional expression
Evoked Potentials
Recognition memory
Cerebral Cortex
Facial expression
medicine.diagnostic_test
Recognition, Psychology
General Medicine
Fear
Expression (mathematics)
Facial Expression
Female
Psychology
Photic Stimulation
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 18736297
- Volume :
- 139
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Acta psychologica
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6210f44f385a604ab5690dad9b8b6934