Sex and menstrual cycle phase at encoding influence emotional memory for gist and detail

Abstract

Sex influences on emotional memory have received increasing interest over the past decade. However, only a subset of this previous work explored the influence of sex on memory for central information (gist) and peripheral detail in emotional versus neutral contexts. Here we examined the influence of sex and menstrual cycle phase at encoding on memory for either an emotional or neutral story, specifically with respect to the retention of gist and peripheral detail. Healthy naturally cycling women and men viewed a brief, narrated, three-phase story containing neutral or emotionally arousing elements. One week later, participants received a surprise free recall test for story elements. The results indicate that naturally cycling women in the luteal (high hormone) phase of the menstrual cycle at encoding show enhanced memory for peripheral details, but not gist, when in the emotional compared with neutral stories (p<.05). In contrast, naturally cycling women in the follicular (low hormone) phase of the menstrual cycle at encoding did not show enhanced memory for gist or peripheral details in the emotional compared with neutral stories. Men show enhanced memory for gist, but not peripheral details, in the emotional versus neutral stories (p<.05). In addition, these sex influences on memory cannot be attributed to differences in attention or arousal; luteal women, follicular women, and men performed similarly on measures of attention (fixation time percentage) and arousal (pupil diameter changes) during the most arousing phase of the emotional story. These findings suggest that sex and menstrual cycle phase at encoding influence long term memory for different types of emotional information.

Post-learning stress enhances long-term memory and differentially influences memory in females depending on menstrual stage

“…We also performed exploratory analyses on the memory data from female participants to determine whether menstrual cycle stage influence any observed effects. In order to do so, we divided female participants into follicular [0-14 days since last period; N = 12 (8 stress, 4 no stress)] or luteal [≥ 15 days since last period; N = 13 (4 stress, 9 no stress)] phases of the menstrual cycle (Nielsen, Ahmed, & Cahill, 2013). This division was based on selfreport data obtained from female participants regarding how many days it had been since their last period.…”

Decreased susceptibility to false memories from misinformation in hormonal contraception users

“…Therefore, since HC profoundly alters HPG activity and HPA reactivity (Bentz et al, 2013;Kirschbaum, Kudielka, Gaab, Schommer, & Hellhammer, 1999;Nielsen, Ahmed, & Cahill, 2013;Nielsen, Segal, Worden, Yim, & Cahill, 2013) and the HPG and HPA axes have a bi-directional relationship (Turner, Keating, & Tilbrook, 2012), it is likely that under conditions of arousal and/or stress, use of hormonal contraceptives alters learning and memory in these women.…”

“…For example, studies involving exogenous cortisol administration found that verbal retrieval (Kuhlmann & Wolf, 2005) and fear learning (Merz et al, 2012) were modified in hormonal contraceptive users compared to naturally cycling (NC) women and men. Other work has utilised classical conditioning paradigms (Beck et al, 2008;Holloway, Beck, & Servatius, 2011;Merz, Stark, Vaitl, Tabbert, & Wolf, 2013; and longterm memory paradigms with an emotional story (Nielsen, Ertman, Lakhani, & Cahill, 2011;Nielsen, Ahmed, et al, 2013) and emotional images (Nielsen, Segal, et al, 2013) to demonstrate that women on HC exhibit altered learning and memory patterns under arousal and stress.…”

“…One potential explanation for this difference was that women were encoding the "emotional gist" of the words more so than men, and as a result, women falsely recalled more critical lures (Dewhurst et al, 2012). However, other work with emotional memory for "gist" suggests that men may encode and recall emotional gist better than women (Cahill & van Stegeren, 2003;Nielsen, Ahmed, et al, 2013).…”

“…The present study included NC women and women on HC; these women participated in the DRM and the misinformation memory-distortion paradigms. Hormonal contraceptive users have reduced levels of endogenous estradiol (Nielsen, Ahmed, et al, 2013) and exhibit better recall of emotional gist (Nielsen et al, 2011) compared to NC women. From this past research, we formed two research questions and possible hypotheses:…”