β-Adrenergic activation and memory for emotional events

Abstract

Substantial evidence from animal studies suggests that enhanced memory associated with emotional arousal results from an activation of beta-adrenergic stress hormone systems during and after an emotional experience. To examine this implication in human subjects, we investigated the effect of the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol hydrochloride on long-term memory for an emotionally arousing short story, or a closely matched but more emotionally neutral story. We report here that propranolol significantly impaired memory of the emotionally arousing story but did not affect memory of the emotionally neutral story. The impairing effect of propranolol on memory of the emotional story was not due either to reduced emotional responsiveness or to nonspecific sedative or attentional effects. The results support the hypothesis that enhanced memory associated with emotional experiences involves activation of the beta-adrenergic system.

Muscle tension induced after learning enhances long-term narrative and visual memory in healthy older adults

“…Thus, the current results extend the literature to include visual and narrative episodic memory. There are some parallels to several existing studies that used inherently emotive or arousing images accompanied by verbal narratives, in which retention was better for the arousing than neutral aspects of the story (e.g., Cahill et al, 1994;O'Carroll, Drysdale, Cahill, Shajahan, & Ebmeier, 1999;Southwick et al, 2002). Yet, the effects in these studies were predominantly attributable to the narrative elements of the stimuli.…”

“…learning (Nielson & Jensen, 1994;Nielson et al, 1996). The underlying mechanism of the effect was not assessed in this study, but based on prior studies, it is believed to involve modulation of the autonomic nervous system (Kluess & Wood, 2005;Nielson & Jensen, 1994;Stewart et al, 2006), specifically via circulating catecholamines (Cahill et al, 1994;Kremiński et al, 2012;Nielson & Jensen, 1994) that are known to influence memory consolidation (McGaugh, 2000).…”

“…have demonstrated dose-dependent memory modulatory effects related to peripheral doses of glucose, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and other catecholaminergic or adrenergic agents in both laboratory animals and humans (e.g., Cahill et al, 1994;McGaugh, 2000;Nielson & Jensen, 1994;Southwick et al, 2002). Recent studies have demonstrated memory modulatory effects in human participants using various post-learning treatments that evoke physiological arousal, including those using aversive stimuli (e.g., Nielson & Arentsen, 2012;Nielson & Powless, 2007;, comedic or rewarding stimuli (e.g., Nielson & Bryant, 2005;Nielson & Powless, 2007) and muscle tension, which is non-specific or less polarized in terms of affect (Nielson & Jensen, 1994;Nielson et al, 1996).…”

Psychophysiological responding to emotional memories in healthy young men after cortisol and propranolol administration

“…That is, effects are stronger when memories are arousing (Buchanan and Lovallo 2001;Kuhlmann et al 2005a, b) or when the testing environment elicits enough arousal (Abercrombie et al 2005;Kuhlmann and Wolf 2006;Tollenaar et al 2008a). Likewise, blocking adrenergic activation impairs the encoding mostly of emotional material (Cahill et al 1994;van Stegeren et al 1998).…”

Effects of semantic relatedness on recall of stimuli preceding emotional oddballs

“…Accordingly, amygdala lesions (Adolphs et al, 1997;Brierley et al, 2004;Markowitsch et al, 1994) or administration of centrally acting b-adrenergic receptor antagonists (Cahill et al, 1994;van Stegeren et al, 1998) reduce memory enhancements attributable to emotional arousal. Because declarative memory is processed by the HC0MTL at the level of encoding (Cabeza & Nyberg, 2000;Mayes & Montaldi, 1999), emotionally arousing material that activate the amygdala should also produce enhancements during encoding for semantic and episodic memories, alike.…”