Maratos E J, Rugg M D
University College London, UK.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2001 Oct 1;13(7):877-91. doi: 10.1162/089892901753165809.
In two experiments, words were presented in negatively or neutrally valenced sentences. At test, subjects made old/new recognition judgments to these words. In Experiment 2 only, for words judged old, subjects also indicated whether the words had been studied in a neutral or a negative context. In Experiment 1, left parietal old/new event-related brain potential (ERP) effects were larger and more sustained when elicited by words that had been studied in negative sentences, and a right frontal old/new effect was elicited by these words exclusively. In Experiment 2, the left parietal and right frontal effects elicited by old words correctly assigned to their study context were equivalent in size regardless of the nature of the context; a third ERP old/new effect, maximal over posterior scalp regions, was seen only for words from negative contexts. The findings indicate that incidental retrieval of emotional context gives rise to greater activation in neural systems supporting conscious recollection than does retrieval of nonemotional context. When contextual retrieval is intentional, recollection of emotional and non-emotional information are associated with equivalent engagement of these systems. The findings from Experiment 2 suggest that additional neural circuitry may be activated selectively by emotionally valenced episodic information.
在两项实验中，单词呈现于负性或中性效价的句子中。在测试时，受试者对这些单词做出旧/新的识别判断。仅在实验2中，对于判断为旧的单词，受试者还需指出这些单词是在中性还是负性语境中学习的。在实验1中，当由在负性句子中学习的单词引发时，左顶叶旧/新事件相关脑电位（ERP）效应更大且更持久，并且这些单词仅引发了右额叶旧/新效应。在实验2中，无论语境性质如何，正确归属于其学习语境的旧单词所引发的左顶叶和右额叶效应在大小上是等同的；仅在来自负性语境的单词中观察到第三个ERP旧/新效应，其在头皮后部区域最为显著。研究结果表明，与非情感语境的检索相比，情感语境的偶然检索在支持有意识回忆的神经系统中会引发更大的激活。当语境检索是有意的时，情感和非情感信息的回忆与这些系统的同等参与相关联。实验2的结果表明，额外的神经回路可能会被有情感效价的情景信息选择性地激活。
