Emotional memory: What does the amygdala do?

AbstractRecent studies of the human amygdala have shed new light on its roles in two distinct, but related processes: emotional memory and the evaluation of emotional stimuli

Organizational Design for Spill Containment in Deepwater Drilling Operations in the Gulf of Mexico: Assessment of the Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC)

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 led to the deaths of 11 workers, a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf, and nearly three months of massive engineering and logistics efforts to stop the spill. The series of failures before the well was finally capped and the spill contained revealed an inability to deal effectively with a well in deepwater and ultradeepwater. Ensuring that containment capabilities are adequate for drilling operations at these depths is therefore a salient challenge for government and industry. In this paper we assess the Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC), a consortium aimed at designing and building a system capable of containing future deepwater spills in the Gulf. We also consider alternatives for long-term readiness for deepwater spill containment. We focus on the roles of liability and regulation as determinants of readiness and the adequacy of incentives for technological innovation in oil spill containment technology to keep pace with advances in deepwater drilling capability. Liability and regulation can significantly influence the strength of these incentives. In addition, we discuss appropriate governance structure as a major determinant of the effectiveness of MWCC.oil spill, containment, industry R&D, liability, regulation, governance, innovation

The Challenges of Educating Students in a Growing Climate of Poverty

In this presentation these three professionals will share stories and research from time on the front line of educating students in poverty. Challenges will be acknowledged and successes will be shared from time in the classroom as teachers working in high poverty schools to becoming principals in schools with students of high poverty

Shared neural substrates of emotionally enhanced perceptual and mnemonic vividness

It is well known that emotionally salient events are remembered more vividly than mundane ones. Our recent research has demonstrated that such memory vividness is due in part to the subjective experience of emotional events as more perceptually vivid, an effect we call emotion-enhanced vividness, or EEV. The present study built on previously reported research in which fMRI data were collected while participants rated relative levels of visual noise overlaid on emotionally salient and neutral images. Ratings of greater EEV were associated with greater activation in the amygdala, visual cortex, and posterior insula. In the present study, we measured BOLD activation that predicted recognition memory vividness for these same images one week later. Results showed that, after controlling for differences between scenes in low-level objective features, hippocampus activation uniquely predicted subsequent memory vividness. In contrast, amygdala and visual cortex regions that were sensitive to EEV were also modulated by subsequent ratings of memory vividness. These findings suggest shared neural substrates for the influence of emotional salience on perceptual and mnemonic vividness, with amygdala and visual cortex activation at encoding contributing to the experience of both perception and subsequent memory. © 2013 Todd, Schmitz, Susskind and Anderson

Eye Movement Monitoring Reveals Differential Influences of Emotion on Memory

Research shows that memory for emotional aspects of an event may be enhanced at the cost of impaired memory for surrounding peripheral details. However, this has only been assessed directly via verbal reports which reveal the outcome of a long stream of processing but cannot shed light on how/when emotion may affect the retrieval process. In the present experiment, eye movement monitoring (EMM) was used as an indirect measure of memory as it can reveal aspects of online memory processing. For example, do emotions modulate the nature of memory representations or the speed with which such memories can be accessed? Participants viewed central negative and neutral scenes surrounded by three neutral objects and after a brief delay, memory was assessed indirectly via EMM and then directly via verbal reports. Consistent with the previous literature, emotion enhanced central and impaired peripheral memory as indexed by eye movement scanning and verbal reports. This suggests that eye movement scanning may contribute and/or is related to conscious access of memory. However, the central/peripheral tradeoff effect was not observed in an early measure of eye movement behavior, i.e., participants were faster to orient to a critical region of change in the periphery irrespective of whether it was previously studied in a negative or neutral context. These findings demonstrate emotion's differential influences on different aspects of retrieval. In particular, emotion appears to affect the detail within, and/or the evaluation of, stored memory representations, but it may not affect the initial access to those representations

Psychophysical and neural evidence for emotion-enhanced perceptual vividness

Highly emotional events are associated with vivid flashbulb memories. Here we examine whether the flashbulb metaphor characterizes a previously unknown emotion-enhanced vividness (EEV) during initial perceptual experience. Using a magnitude estimation procedure, human observers estimated the relative magnitude of visual noise overlaid on scenes. After controlling for computational metrics of objective visual salience, emotional salience was associated with decreased noise, or heightened perceptual vividness, demonstrating EEV, which predicted later memory vividness. Event-related potentials revealed a posterior P2 component at ~200 ms that was associated with both increased emotional salience and decreased objective noise levels, consistent with EEV. Blood oxygenation level-dependent response in the lateral occipital complex (LOC), insula, and amygdala predicted online EEV. The LOC and insula represented complimentary influences on EEV, with the amygdala statistically mediating both. These findings indicate that the metaphorical vivid light surrounding emotional memories is embodied directly in perceptual cortices during initial experience, supported by cortico-limbic interactions. © 2012 the authors

Insulin independence following islet transplantation improves long-term metabolic outcomes

AIMS: Pancreatic islet allotransplantation is an effective therapy for type 1 diabetes mellitus, restoring glycaemic control and hypoglycaemic awareness in patients with recurrent severe hypoglycaemia. Insulin independence following transplant is being increasingly reported; however, this is not a primary endpoint in the UK. Having surpassed 10 years of islet transplantation in Scotland, we aimed to evaluate the impact of insulin independence following transplant on metabolic outcomes and graft survival.METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis on data collected prospectively between 2011 and 2022. Patients who underwent islet transplantation in Scotland up to the 31st January 2020 were included. Primary endpoint was graft survival (stimulated C-peptide &gt;50 pmol/L). Secondary endpoints included GOLD score, HbA1c, C-peptide and insulin requirement. Outcomes were compared between patients who achieved insulin independence at any point following transplant versus those who did not.RESULTS: 60 patients were included. 74.5% experienced &gt;50 severe hypoglycaemic episodes in the year preceding transplant. There was a 55.0% decrease in insulin requirement following transplant and 30.0% achieved insulin independence. Mean graft survival time was 9.0 years (95% CI 7.2-10.9) in patients who achieved insulin independence versus 4.4 years (95% CI 3.4-5.3) in patients who did not. Insulin independence was associated with significantly improved graft function, glycaemic control and hypoglycaemic awareness at 1 year.CONCLUSIONS: This is the largest UK single-centre study on islet transplant to date. Our findings demonstrate significantly improved outcomes in patients who achieved insulin independence following islet transplantation.</p

A specific amino acid motif of HLA-DRB1 mediates risk and interacts with smoking history in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease in which genetic risk has been mapped to HLA, but precise allelic associations have been difficult to infer due to limitations in genotyping methodology. Mapping PD risk at highest possible resolution, we performed sequencing of 11 HLA genes in 1,597 PD cases and 1,606 controls. We found that susceptibility to PD can be explained by a specific combination of amino acids at positions 70-74 on the HLA-DRB1 molecule. Previously identified as the primary risk factor in rheumatoid arthritis and referred to as the "shared epitope" (SE), the residues Q/R-K/R-R-A-A at positions 70-74 in combination with valine at position 11 (11-V) is highly protective in PD, while risk is attributable to the identical epitope in the absence of 11-V. Notably, these effects are modified by history of cigarette smoking, with a strong protective effect mediated by a positive history of smoking in combination with the SE and 11-V (P = 10-4; odds ratio, 0.51; 95% confidence interval, 0.36-0.72) and risk attributable to never smoking in combination with the SE without 11-V (P = 0.01; odds ratio, 1.51; 95% confidence interval, 1.08-2.12). The association of specific combinations of amino acids that participate in critical peptide-binding pockets of the HLA class II molecule implicates antigen presentation in PD pathogenesis and provides further support for genetic control of neuroinflammation in disease. The interaction of HLA-DRB1 with smoking history in disease predisposition, along with predicted patterns of peptide binding to HLA, provide a molecular model that explains the unique epidemiology of smoking in PD