Costa Manuela, Pacheco-Estefan Daniel, Gil-Nagel Antonio, Toledano Rafael, Imbach Lukas, Sarnthein Johannes, Strange Bryan A
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, University Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain.
Department of Psychobiology and Health, Faculty of Psychology, Autonoma University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 24;16(1):6820. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61928-2.
Emotional memories require coordinated activity of the amygdala and hippocampus. Human intracranial recordings have shown that formation of aversive memories involves an amygdala theta-hippocampal gamma phase code. Yet, the mechanisms engaged during translation of aversive experiences into memories and subsequent retrieval remain unclear. Directly recording from human amygdala and hippocampus, here we show that hippocampal gamma activity increases for correctly remembered aversive scenes. Crucially, patterns of amygdala high amplitude gamma activity at encoding are reactivated in the hippocampus, but not amygdala, during both aversive encoding and retrieval. Trial-specific hippocampal gamma patterns showing highest representational similarity with amygdala activity at encoding are reactivated in the hippocampus during aversive retrieval. This reactivation process occurs against a background of gamma activity that is otherwise decorrelated between encoding and retrieval. Thus, phasic hippocampal gamma responses track the retrieval of aversive memories, with activity patterns apparently entrained by the amygdala during encoding.
情绪记忆需要杏仁核和海马体的协同活动。人类颅内记录表明，厌恶记忆的形成涉及杏仁核θ波-海马体γ波相位编码。然而，在将厌恶经历转化为记忆以及随后的提取过程中所涉及的机制仍不清楚。通过直接从人类杏仁核和海马体进行记录，我们在此表明，对于正确记忆的厌恶场景，海马体γ波活动会增加。至关重要的是，在厌恶编码和提取过程中，编码时杏仁核高幅γ波活动模式会在海马体中重新激活，但不会在杏仁核中重新激活。在厌恶提取过程中，与编码时杏仁核活动表现出最高表征相似性的特定试验海马体γ波模式会在海马体中重新激活。这种重新激活过程发生在编码和提取之间γ波活动原本不相关的背景下。因此，海马体的相位γ波反应追踪厌恶记忆的提取，其活动模式在编码期间显然由杏仁核带动。
