Emotionally positive situations boost memory for similar future events

Rewarding learning today can improve learning tomorrow; this is one of the conclusions reached by the researchers from the Cognition and Brain Plasticity research group of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Bellvitge (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona (UB) in their last work on the impact of emotions on the way we remember things.

The study, published in the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory journal, demonstrates for the first time (in humans) that the effects of the association of positive emotions in the process of acquisition and consolidation of memories extend selectively and prospectively over time.

Further information.

Reference article:

Oyarzún, J.P., Packard, P.A., Diego-Balaguer, R., Fuentemilla, L. Motivated encoding selectively promotes memory for future inconsequential semantically-related events. Neurobiol Learn Mem. May 17,2016 . DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.05.005

Image: Researchers Javiera Oyarzún and Pau Packard. Photo: IDIBELL.