Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Emotionally-motivated differentiation of hippocampal memory representations

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

R. Gerald Monkman¹, Vinshu P. Murty¹, Brice A. Kuhl¹; ¹University of Oregon

Memory interference can occur when experiences overlap with each other (e.g., family dinners that involve the same people at the same location). The hippocampus is thought to play a key role in differentiating similar memories, but there remains limited understanding of the factors that promote differentiation of hippocampal representations. One potentially relevant factor is emotion. The emotional significance of events is known to alter hippocampal neurophysiology, which may change the propensity for the hippocampus to differentiate similar memories. In a human fMRI study, we will test whether emotional motivations influence hippocampal memory differentiation. 40 participants will undergo fMRI scanning while encoding and recalling highly similar pairs of emotionally ambiguous video clips. We will manipulate emotional motivations (controlling for the actual videos) by instructing participants to construe the clips in either a positive or negative manner. fMRI pattern similarity analyses will be used to evaluate hippocampal differentiation for video pairs with matched emotional motivations (positive-positive pairs, negative-negative pairs) and in pairs with distinct emotional motivations (positive-negative pairs). We predict that hippocampal differentiation will be greatest when pairs include negative motivations (negative-negative pairs or positive-negative pairs) compared to positive-only motivations (positive-positive pairs). Findings from this study will contribute to understanding of how emotional motivations influence the balance of differentiation versus integration in the hippocampus.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic