Mental hoop diaries: emotional memories of a college basketball game in rival fans.

The rivalry between the men's basketball teams of Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) is one of the most storied traditions in college sports. A subculture of students at each university form social bonds with fellow fans, develop expertise in college basketball rules, team statistics, and individual players, and self-identify as a member of a fan group. The present study capitalized on the high personal investment of these fans and the strong affective tenor of a Duke-UNC basketball game to examine the neural correlates of emotional memory retrieval for a complex sporting event. Male fans watched a competitive, archived game in a social setting. During a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging session, participants viewed video clips depicting individual plays of the game that ended with the ball being released toward the basket. For each play, participants recalled whether or not the shot went into the basket. Hemodynamic signal changes time locked to correct memory decisions were analyzed as a function of emotional intensity and valence, according to the fan's perspective. Results showed intensity-modulated retrieval activity in midline cortical structures, sensorimotor cortex, the striatum, and the medial temporal lobe, including the amygdala. Positively valent memories specifically recruited processing in dorsal frontoparietal regions, and additional activity in the insula and medial temporal lobe for positively valent shots recalled with high confidence. This novel paradigm reveals how brain regions implicated in emotion, memory retrieval, visuomotor imagery, and social cognition contribute to the recollection of specific plays in the mind of a sports fan.

A comparison of dimensional models of emotion: evidence from emotions, prototypical events, autobiographical memories, and words.

The intensity and valence of 30 emotion terms, 30 events typical of those emotions, and 30 autobiographical memories cued by those emotions were each rated by different groups of 40 undergraduates. A vector model gave a consistently better account of the data than a circumplex model, both overall and in the absence of high-intensity, neutral valence stimuli. The Positive Activation - Negative Activation (PANA) model could be tested at high levels of activation, where it is identical to the vector model. The results replicated when ratings of arousal were used instead of ratings of intensity for the events and autobiographical memories. A reanalysis of word norms gave further support for the vector and PANA models by demonstrating that neutral valence, high-arousal ratings resulted from the averaging of individual positive and negative valence ratings. Thus, compared to a circumplex model, vector and PANA models provided overall better fits.

I can see it both ways: first- and third-person visual perspectives at retrieval.

The number of studies examining visual perspective during retrieval has recently grown. However, the way in which perspective has been conceptualized differs across studies. Some studies have suggested perspective is experienced as either a first-person or a third-person perspective, whereas others have suggested both perspectives can be experienced during a single retrieval attempt. This aspect of perspective was examined across three studies, which used different measurement techniques commonly used in studies of perspective. Results suggest that individuals can experience more than one perspective when recalling events. Furthermore, the experience of the two perspectives correlated differentially with ratings of vividness, suggesting that the two perspectives should not be considered in opposition of one another. We also found evidence of a gender effect in the experience of perspective, with females experiencing third-person perspectives more often than males. Future studies should allow for the experience of more than one perspective during retrieval.

The frequency of voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories across the life span.

In the present study, ratings of the memory of an important event from the previous week on the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval, belief in its accuracy, visual imagery, auditory imagery, setting, emotional intensity, valence, narrative coherence, and centrality to the life story were obtained from 988 adults whose ages ranged from 15 to over 90. Another 992 adults provided the same ratings for a memory from their confirmation day, when they were at about age 14. The frequencies of involuntary and voluntary retrieval were similar. Both frequencies were predicted by emotional intensity and centrality to the life story. The results from the present study-which is the first to measure the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval for the same events-are counter to both cognitive and clinical theories, which consistently claim that involuntary memories are infrequent as compared with voluntary memories. Age and gender differences are noted.

The normative and the personal life: individual differences in life scripts and life story events among USA and Danish undergraduates.

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in a prototypical life course. American and Danish undergraduates produced life story events and life scripts by listing the seven most important events in their own lives and in the lives of hypothetical people living ordinary lives. They also rated their events on several scales and completed measures of depression, PTSD symptoms, and centrality of a negative event to their lives. The Danish life script replicated earlier work; the American life script showed minor differences from the Danish life script, apparently reflecting genuine differences in shared events as well as less homogeneity in the American sample. Both consisted of mostly positive events that came disproportionately from ages 15 to 30. Valence of life story events correlated with life script valence, depression, PTSD symptoms, and identity. In the Danish undergraduates, measures of life story deviation from the life script correlated with measures of depression and PTSD symptoms.

A memory-based model of posttraumatic stress disorder: evaluating basic assumptions underlying the PTSD diagnosis.

In the mnemonic model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the current memory of a negative event, not the event itself, determines symptoms. The model is an alternative to the current event-based etiology of PTSD represented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The model accounts for important and reliable findings that are often inconsistent with the current diagnostic view and that have been neglected by theoretical accounts of the disorder, including the following observations. The diagnosis needs objective information about the trauma and peritraumatic emotions but uses retrospective memory reports that can have substantial biases. Negative events and emotions that do not satisfy the current diagnostic criteria for a trauma can be followed by symptoms that would otherwise qualify for PTSD. Predisposing factors that affect the current memory have large effects on symptoms. The inability-to-recall-an-important-aspect-of-the-trauma symptom does not correlate with other symptoms. Loss or enhancement of the trauma memory affects PTSD symptoms in predictable ways. Special mechanisms that apply only to traumatic memories are not needed, increasing parsimony and the knowledge that can be applied to understanding PTSD.

Memory in posttraumatic stress disorder: properties of voluntary and involuntary, traumatic and nontraumatic autobiographical memories in people with and without posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

One hundred fifteen undergraduates rated 15 word-cued memories and their 3 most negatively stressful, 3 most positive, and 7 most important events and completed tests of personality and depression. Eighty-nine also recorded involuntary memories online for 1 week. In the first 3-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, comparisons were made of memories of stressful events versus control events and involuntary versus voluntary memories in people high versus low in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. For all participants, stressful memories had more emotional intensity, more frequent voluntary and involuntary retrieval, but not more fragmentation. For all memories, participants with greater PTSD symptom severity showed the same differences. Involuntary memories had more emotional intensity and less centrality to the life story than voluntary memories. Meeting the diagnostic criteria for traumatic events had no effect, but the emotional responses to events did. In 533 undergraduates, correlations among measures were replicated and the Negative Intensity factor of the Affect Intensity Measure correlated with PTSD symptom severity. No special trauma mechanisms were needed to account for the results, which are summarized by the autobiographical memory theory of PTSD.

The reappearance hypothesis revisited: recurrent involuntary memories after traumatic events and in everyday life.

Recurrent involuntary memories are autobiographical memories that come to mind with no preceding retrieval attempt and that are subjectively experienced as being repetitive. Clinically, they are classified as a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder. The present work is the first to systematically examine recurrent involuntary memories outside clinical settings. Study 1 examines recurrent involuntary memories among survivors of the tsunami catastrophe in Southeast Asia in 2004. Study 2 examines recurrent involuntary memories in a large general population. Study 3 examines whether the contents of recurrent involuntary memories recorded in a diary study are duplicates of, or differ from, one another. We show that recurrent involuntary memories are not limited to clinical populations or to emotionally negative experiences; that they typically do not come to mind in a fixed and unchangeable form; and that they show the same pattern regarding accessibility as do autobiographical memories in general. We argue that recurrent involuntary memories after traumas and in everyday life can be explained in terms of general and well-established mechanisms of autobiographical memory.

The short and long of it: neural correlates of temporal-order memory for autobiographical events.

Previous functional neuroimaging studies of temporal-order memory have investigated memory for laboratory stimuli that are causally unrelated and poor in sensory detail. In contrast, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated temporal-order memory for autobiographical events that were causally interconnected and rich in sensory detail. Participants took photographs at many campus locations over a period of several hours, and the following day they were scanned while making temporal-order judgments to pairs of photographs from different locations. By manipulating the temporal lag between the two locations in each trial, we compared the neural correlates associated with reconstruction processes, which we hypothesized depended on recollection and contribute mainly to short lags, and distance processes, which we hypothesized to depend on familiarity and contribute mainly to longer lags. Consistent with our hypotheses, parametric fMRI analyses linked shorter lags to activations in regions previously associated with recollection (left prefrontal, parahippocampal, precuneus, and visual cortices), and longer lags with regions previously associated with familiarity (right prefrontal cortex). The hemispheric asymmetry in prefrontal cortex activity fits very well with evidence and theories regarding the contributions of the left versus right prefrontal cortex to memory (recollection vs. familiarity processes) and cognition (systematic vs. heuristic processes). In sum, using a novel photo-paradigm, this study provided the first evidence regarding the neural correlates of temporal-order for autobiographical events.

Flashbulb memories and posttraumatic stress reactions across the life span: age-related effects of the German occupation of Denmark during World War II.

A representative sample of older Danes were interviewed about experiences from the German occupation of Denmark in World War II. The number of participants with flashbulb memories for the German invasion (1940) and capitulation (1945) increased with participants' age at the time of the events up to age 8. Among participants under 8 years at the time of their most traumatic event, age at the time correlated positively with the current level of posttraumatic stress reactions and the vividness of stressful memories and their centrality to life story and identity. These findings were replicated in Study 2 for self-nominated stressful events sampled from the entire life span using a representative sample of Danes born after 1945. The results are discussed in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder and childhood amnesia.

Co-activation of the amygdala, hippocampus and inferior frontal gyrus during autobiographical memory retrieval.

Functional MRI was used to investigate the role of medial temporal lobe and inferior frontal lobe regions in autobiographical recall. Prior to scanning, participants generated cue words for 50 autobiographical memories and rated their phenomenological properties using our autobiographical memory questionnaire (AMQ). During scanning, the cue words were presented and participants pressed a button when they retrieved the associated memory. The autobiographical retrieval task was interleaved in an event-related design with a semantic retrieval task (category generation). Region-of-interest analyses showed greater activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and right inferior frontal gyrus during autobiographical retrieval relative to semantic retrieval. In addition, the left inferior frontal gyrus showed a more prolonged duration of activation in the semantic retrieval condition. A targeted correlational analysis revealed pronounced functional connectivity among the amygdala, hippocampus, and right inferior frontal gyrus during autobiographical retrieval but not during semantic retrieval. These results support theories of autobiographical memory that hypothesize co-activation of frontotemporal areas during recollection of episodes from the personal past.

Autobiographical memories of anxiety-related experiences.

Ninety-nine undergraduate students retrieved three memories associated with each of the five emotional experiences: panic, trauma, worry, social anxiety, and feeling content. Subsequently, they answered 24 questions assessing properties of each memory, including the vividness and perceived accuracy of the memories and sensory, emotional, and anxiety-related experiences during retrieval. Memories were coded for affective tone and specificity. Results indicated that panic-related and trauma-related memories were rated similarly as content memories, but that they generally were associated with more imagery and emotional experiencing than worry-related or social anxiety-related memories. Participants experienced panic and worry symptoms to the greatest degree when they retrieved panic-related and trauma-related memories. All anxiety-related memories were characterized by more negative tone than content memories. Panic-related and trauma-related memories were more specific than worry-related, social anxiety-related, and content memories. These findings can explain partially why individuals with some, but not all, anxiety disorders experience enhanced memory for threatening material.

Brain activity during episodic retrieval of autobiographical and laboratory events: an fMRI study using a novel photo paradigm.

Functional neuroimaging studies of episodic memory retrieval generally measure brain activity while participants remember items encountered in the laboratory ("controlled laboratory condition") or events from their own life ("open autobiographical condition"). Differences in activation between these conditions may reflect differences in retrieval processes, memory remoteness, emotional content, retrieval success, self-referential processing, visual/spatial memory, and recollection. To clarify the nature of these differences, a functional MRI study was conducted using a novel "photo paradigm," which allows greater control over the autobiographical condition, including a measure of retrieval accuracy. Undergraduate students took photos in specified campus locations ("controlled autobiographical condition"), viewed in the laboratory similar photos taken by other participants (controlled laboratory condition), and were then scanned while recognizing the two kinds of photos. Both conditions activated a common episodic memory network that included medial temporal and prefrontal regions. Compared with the controlled laboratory condition, the controlled autobiographical condition elicited greater activity in regions associated with self-referential processing (medial prefrontal cortex), visual/spatial memory (visual and parahippocampal regions), and recollection (hippocampus). The photo paradigm provides a way of investigating the functional neuroanatomy of real-life episodic memory under rigorous experimental control.

Emotional intensity predicts autobiographical memory experience.

College students generated autobiographical memories from distinct emotional categories that varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and intensity (high vs. low). They then rated various perceptual, cognitive, and emotional properties for each memory. The distribution of these emotional memories favored a vector model over a circumplex model. For memories of all specific emotions, intensity accounted for significantly more variance in autobiographical memory characteristics than did valence or age of the memory. In two additional experiments, we examined multiple memories of emotions of high intensity and positive or negative valence and of positive valence and high or low intensity. Intensity was a more consistent predictor of autobiographical memory properties than was valence or the age of the memory in these experiments as well. The general effects of emotion on autobiographical memory properties are due primarily to intensity differences in emotional experience, not to benefits or detriments associated with a specific valence.

Stability in autobiographical memories.

A total of 30 undergraduates recalled the same 20 autobiographical memories at two sessions separated by 2 weeks. At each session they dated their memories and rated them on 18 properties commonly studied in autobiographical memory experiments. Individuals showed moderate stability in their ratings on the 18 scales (r approximately .5), with consistency of dating being much higher (r = .96). There was more stability in the individuals' average rating on each scale (r approximately .8), even when the averages were calculated on different memories in the different sessions. The results are consistent with a constructive view of autobiographical memory, in which stable individual differences in cognitive style are important.