ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2016
Memory and reward systems coproduce 'nostalgic' experiences in the brain.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- The efficacy of reminiscence therapy on the cognition of older patients with cognitive impairment or dementia: a meta-analysis based on regulatory factors.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Pooled it
- Use of autobiographical stimuli as a mood manipulation procedure: Systematic mapping review.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Investigating the effects of reminiscence using smells on loneliness and depressive symptoms in community-dwelling older adults: a randomised controlled trial.Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society · 2025Trial
- Same emotion, different stimuli: A context-sensitive method to evoke nostalgia.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Cross-modal impacts of olfactory perception and individual differences in emotional responses to odors modulate hedonic evaluations of visual scenes.Chemical senses · 2026Article
- Unfolding Nostalgia: Spatial Visualization, Nostalgia, and Well-Being.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A Nostalgia Brain-Music Interface for enhancing nostalgia, well-being, and memory vividness in younger and older individuals.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Music-Evoked Nostalgia Activates Default Mode and Reward Networks Across the Lifespan.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Harmonizing the past: EEG-based brain network unveil modality-specific mechanisms of nostalgia.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- EEG Microstate Associated with Trait Nostalgia.Brain topography · 2024Article
- EEG microstates are associated with music training experience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Theory of brain complexity and marital behaviors: The application of complexity science and neuroscience to explain the complexities of marital behaviors.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: a social-cognitive neuroscience perspective.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Predictive Utility of Reward-Based Motives Underlying Excessive and Problematic Social Networking Site Use.Psychological reports · 2022Article
- Compulsory volunteers' nostalgia and its relationships with positive memories, age, past experiences, and volunteer intention.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Thalamocortical Mechanisms for Nostalgia-Induced Analgesia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Nostalgia evocation through seasonality-conscious purchasing behavior revealed by online survey using vegetable names.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Effect of Nostalgic Contents on Self-Esteem: The Mediating Role of Loneliness.Psychology research and behavior management · 2022Article
- Neural correlates of product attachment to cosmetics.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Nostalgia enhances detection of death threat: neural and behavioral evidence.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People sometimes experience an emotional state known as 'nostalgia', which involves experiencing predominantly positive emotions while remembering autobiographical events. Nostalgia is thought to play an important role in psychological resilience. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown involvement of memory and reward systems in such experiences. However, it remains unclear how these two systems are collaboratively involved with nostalgia experiences. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of healthy females to investigate the relationship between memory-reward co-activation and nostalgia, using childhood-related visual stimuli. Moreover, we examined the factors constituting nostalgia and their neural correlates. We confirmed the presence of nostalgia-related activity in both memory and reward systems, including the hippocampus (HPC), substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA), and ventral striatum (VS). We also found significant HPC-VS co-activation, with its strength correlating with individual 'nostalgia tendencies'. Factor analyses showed that two dimensions underlie nostalgia: emotional and personal significance and chronological remoteness, with the former correlating with caudal SN/VTA and left anterior HPC activity, and the latter correlating with rostral SN/VTA activity. These findings demonstrate the cooperative activity of memory and reward systems, where each system has a specific role in the construction of the factors that underlie the experience of nostalgia.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.