Age Related Changes In Emotional Memory

Objective Emotional memory(EM) refers to the modulatory effect of emotion on different stages of memory processing,including encoding,consolidation,and retrieval. Despite of the ubiquity of this behaviour,However,the valenceof stimuli(negative, neutral and positive) might affect the way individuals perceive and remember information.Whether all would be equally affected by aging is unknown,age-related shifts in emotional memory are not well understood.The present study aimed is to examines whether the valenceof stimuli affect the way individuals perceive and remember information;whether age affects perception and memory for emotional information that varies on the basis of valence,and to find out that how these affects in healthy eldersMethods Subjects,including 40 healthy adults,40 healthy elders,were administered with a neuropsychological battery including emotional words and emotional pictures tasks.In emotional words task,subjects were asked to rate their feelings about each word on a five-point Likert scale(1 = negative,3 = neutral,5 = positive).After completing the word ratings 30-min later,participants were given a written yes/no recognition test for the words.They were presented with a 108- word list;composed of the 54 target words rated earlier and 54 distracter words.The target and distracter words were matched for frequency,word length and emotional valencc.In emotional pictures task,subjects were asked to rate their feelings about each picture on a five-point liken scale(1 = negative,3 = neutral,5 = positive).Each picture was displayed for 10 s,after completing the picture ratings 30-min later,participants were given a written yes/no recognition test for the pictures.They were presented with a 90-word list;composed of the 45 target words rated earlier and 45 distracter words.The target and distracter pictures were matched on emotional valence that was used in the recognition taskResults Compared with the young controls[words recognition(40.98±1.33);images recognition(34.40±1.44)],emotional memory in the elderly[words recognition (34.60±1.24);images recognition(29.67±1.18)]had been impaired(P＜0.05,P＜0.01), older adults remembering positively better than negatively valence stimuli,but younger adults remembering negatively better than positively valence stimuli,In both the elderly and young,studies have found that emotionally evocative stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli.Conclusions Study found that age did not significantly affect judgments of emotional stimuli,and emotionally evocative stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli. The elderly and young showed similar patterns of emotional enhancement of memory, age-related emotional enhancement of memory does not differ between the old and the young.However,The elderly selectively better recognition for the valence of positive words and pictures;the young selectively better recognition for the valence of negative words and pictures.indicates that they may have different neuromechanisms.