Bringing positive and negative events to mind: Effects of age on emotional memory retrieval

将积极和消极的事件记入脑海：年龄对情绪记忆提取的影响

• 批准号: 10693302
• 负责人: Elizabeth Ann Kensinger
• 金额: $ 40.04万
• 依托单位: BOSTON COLLEGE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2027-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10693302
• 关键词: Address; Adult; Affect; Age; Aging; Agreement; Behavior; Behavioral; Brain; Categories; Characteristics; Cognition; Cognitive aging; Collaborations; Complex; Data; Decision Making; Elderly; Emotional; Emotions; Episodic memory; Event; Feeling; Friends; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Generations; Human; Impairment; Individual; Intervention; Knowledge; Life; Link; Longevity; Measurable; Memory; Mind; Pattern; Persons; Process; Qualifying; Recording of previous events; Reporting; Research; Resolution; Retrieval; Sensory; Social Network; Stimulus; Testing; Thinking; Time; Well in self; Work; age effect; age related; career; cognitive neuroscience; emotional experience; experience; fascinate; forgetting; human old age (65+); meetings; member; memory retrieval; middle age; neural; phenomenological models; success; young adult

PROJECT SUMMARY The details we bring to mind about past positive and negative events can have important implications for our mental wellbeing, affecting how we see ourselves and maintain relationships with others. Do we vividly remember an argument with a friend, or the heartfelt apology that followed? Do we remember the feeling of accomplishment after giving a talk, or our struggle to answer an audience member’s question? The details we bring to mind also can affect our decision-making, with consequences for our social networks and career success: Will we call that friend again? Will we agree to give a talk at an upcoming meeting? There are fascinating examples that suggest that what emotional details we remember from past events may vary, in part, with a person’s age. Older age is associated with a greater use of positive (vs. negative) words in descriptions of past events (Pennebaker & Stone, 2003; Ford et al., 2016), and with a greater reported focus on positive aspects of otherwise challenging situations (Ford et al., 2018a, b). Yet we understand little about why such differences arise, and the answer is likely to have implications for understanding how cognition-emotion links differ across the adult lifespan and how adults of various ages achieve mental wellbeing. The first aims of this research are to understand these differences upon initial retrieval, focusing on memory phenomenology (Aim 1) and neural representations (Aim 2). Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we examine two types of recapitulation: trial-specific (tied to each specific encoded event) and valence-generalized (shared across stimuli of a particular valence category). We hypothesize that, with older age, memory representations will have more valence-generalized vs. trial-specific recapitulation, and this age-related difference will be most pronounced for memories of positive content. We anticipate this will be reflected in positive memories feeling subjectively vivid to older adults, while lacking in specific detail. A key feature of episodic memory is that it is not a static representation. The details we remember now are not necessarily the details we will remember later, though the way we represent a memory now can tip the scales, making some details more likely to come to mind later and others more likely to be omitted. For emotional memories, our recent research and preliminary data suggest that retrieval at one time-point may trigger the start of what could colloquially be thought of as a “virtuous-memory-cycle”, with positive details emphasized and negative details de-emphasized, or the opposite, a “vicious-memory-cycle.” Critically, we hypothesize that older age increases the likelihood of a “virtuous-memory-cycle.” We propose that age-related differences in memory representations make it particularly likely that older adults’ initial retrieval of positive content impairs their ability to later remember related, negative content (Aim 3) and leads to broader age- related differences in the details accessed over successive retrievals such that, over repeated retrievals, older age is associated with memories that become more positive (Aim 4).

项目摘要 我们对过去积极和消极事件的记忆细节可能会对以下方面产生重要影响： 我们的心理健康，影响我们如何看待自己和维持与他人的关系。我们是否生动地 还记得和朋友的一次争吵，还是随后发自内心的道歉吗？我们是否记得 演讲后的成就感，还是回答听众问题时的挣扎？细节我们 也会影响我们的决策，从而影响我们的社交网络和职业生涯 成功：我们会再打电话给那个朋友吗？我们会同意在即将到来的会议上发表演讲吗？ 有很多有趣的例子表明，我们从过去的事件中记住的情感细节 可能会有所不同，部分，随着一个人的年龄。年龄越大，积极（与消极）的使用越多 描述过去事件的词语（Pennebaker & Stone，2003;福特等人，2016年），更大 据报道，关注的是其他挑战性情况的积极方面（福特等人，2018 a，B）。然而我们 我对为什么会出现这种差异知之甚少，答案可能会对以下问题产生影响： 了解认知-情感联系在成年人的一生中是如何不同的，以及不同年龄的成年人是如何 实现心理健康。本研究的首要目标是了解最初的这些差异 检索，专注于记忆现象学（目标1）和神经表征（目标2）。使用多体素 模式分析（MVPA），我们研究了两种类型的重演：试验特异性（绑定到每个特定的编码 事件）和效价-广义（跨特定效价类别的刺激共享）。我们假设， 随着年龄的增长，记忆表征将有更多的效价概括与试验特异性重演， 这种与年龄相关的差异对于正面内容的记忆最为明显。我们预计这将是 反映在积极的记忆中，老年人主观上感觉生动，但缺乏具体的细节。 情景记忆的一个关键特征是它不是一个静态的表征。我们现在记住的细节是 不一定是我们以后会记得的细节，尽管我们现在表现记忆的方式可以改变我们的记忆。 尺度，使一些细节更可能出现在脑海中后，其他更可能被省略。为 情绪记忆，我们最近的研究和初步数据表明，在一个时间点检索可能 触发了一个可以通俗地被认为是“美德记忆周期”的开始， 强调和消极的细节不强调，或相反，一个"恶性记忆周期"。关键是，我们 假设年龄越大，"良性记忆周期"的可能性就越大。我们认为，与年龄有关的 记忆表征的差异使得老年人最初对积极记忆的提取 内容会损害他们以后记住相关的负面内容的能力（目标3），并导致更广泛的年龄- 在连续检索中访问的细节的相关差异，例如，在重复检索中， 年龄与变得更积极的记忆有关（目标4）。