ArticleLearning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)2021
Emotional learning retroactively enhances item memory but distorts source attribution.
Article in Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Salient experiences enhance mundane memories through graded prioritization.Science advances · 2025Pooled it
- Is there selective retroactive memory enhancement in humans?: a meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Pooled it
- Mood-congruent memory revisited.Psychological review · 2023Pooled it
- Divergent modes of episodic organization underlie whether emotional learning enhances memory across event boundaries.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Emotional learning selectively distorts the temporal organization of memory: A quantitative synthesis.Cognition · 2026Article
- Neural Representation of Episodic Time.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Episodic Memories Bias Contextual Threat Inferences after Aerobic and Mind-Body Exercise.Mental health and physical activity · 2025Article
- Experience-driven competition in neural reorganization after stroke.The Journal of physiology · 2025Review
- Event Segmentation Promotes the Reorganization of Emotional Memory.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Emotional intensity produces a linear relationship on conditioned learning but an inverted U-shaped effect on episodic memory.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Semantic structures facilitate threat memory integration throughout the medial temporal lobe and medial prefrontal cortex.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Reward conditioning may not have an effect on category-specific memory.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Dynamic emotional states shape the episodic structure of memory.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Novel immersive virtual reality experiences do not produce retroactive memory benefits for unrelated material.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2022Article
- Tag and capture: how salient experiences target and rescue nearby events in memory.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2022Review
- Rewarded Extinction Increases Amygdalar Connectivity and Stabilizes Long-Term Memory Traces in the vmPFC.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Laboratory models of post-traumatic stress disorder: The elusive bridge to translation.Neuron · 2022Review
- Survival of the salient: Aversive learning rescues otherwise forgettable memories via neural reactivation and post-encoding hippocampal connectivity.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2022Article
- Memory consolidation as an adaptive process.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Review
- Pattern separation of fear extinction memory.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
An adaptive memory system should prioritize information surrounding a powerful learning event that may prove useful for predicting future meaningful events. The behavioral tagging hypothesis provides a mechanistic framework to interpret how weak experiences persist as durable memories through temporal association with a strong experience. Memories are composed of multiple elements, and different mnemonic aspects of the same experience may be uniquely affected by mechanisms that retroactively modulate a weakly encoded memory. Here, we investigated how emotional learning affects item and source memory for related events encoded close in time. Participants encoded trial-unique category exemplars before, during, and after Pavlovian fear conditioning. Selective retroactive enhancements in 24-h item memory were accompanied by a bias to misattribute items to the temporal context of fear conditioning. The strength of this source memory bias correlated with participants' retroactive item memory enhancement, and source misattribution to the emotional context predicted whether items were remembered overall. In the framework of behavioral tagging: Memory attribution was biased to the temporal context of the stronger event that provided the putative source of memory stabilization for the weaker event. We additionally found that fear conditioning selectively and retroactively enhanced stimulus typicality ratings for related items, and that stimulus typicality also predicted overall item memory. Collectively, these results provide new evidence that items related to emotional learning are misattributed to the temporal context of the emotional event and judged to be more representative of their semantic category. Both processes may facilitate memory retrieval for related events encoded close in time.
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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.