Neural correlates of emotional competition
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Behavioural and neural mechanism of the emotional arousal on cognition
IRAS ID
224609
Contact name
Nilgun Turkileri Inseloz
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Reading
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 30 days
Research summary
Our memory is critical to perform everyday activities. But human memory is not perfect and we can’t remember every little thing. For instance, when you walk down a crowded street, you would see a lot of faces, buildings, and objects; but you may remember only a piece of information which matters to you (e.g., a friend of you who you met on the street). Why do we remember some events while forgetting others? Recent research shows that emotion affects what we remember and what we forget. When we encounter emotional events, emotional reactions induced by the events help us to remember a piece of information which matters to us (such as a friend’s face) while making us to forget everything else (such as a stranger’s face). However, we do not know yet how and why the brain allows emotion to have these opposing effects on memory. Research suggests that one candidate to explain such complex effect of emotion is one of the chemical substances in the brain called norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is released when we experience emotion and considered to affect many brain regions important for memory via its interaction with other chemical substances (namely, glutamate and GABA) in the brain. The main aim of the current study is, thus, to examine brain activity and the role of these chemical substances in the brain while people are exposed to emotional events and remember important information. We will measure chemical substances in the brain and how much each brain region is activated during a memory task, using brain imaging techniques; we will also measure a level of one stress hormone, called alpha amylase, in people’s saliva as an indicator of emotional reactions.
REC name
London - Brighton & Sussex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/1815
Date of REC Opinion
15 Nov 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion