Positive emotions enhance memory for neutral images

How do emotions influence memory? In a collaboration between Hangzhou Normal University and Nanjing Normal University, Xi Jia led a study to explore whether emotions shape how well people remember meaningless, or neutral, images. 

As detailed in their new JNeurosci paper, the researchers recorded the brain activity of 44 study participants as they viewed meaningless images of squiggles followed by images meant to evoke positive, neutral, or negative emotions. Researchers presented each squiggle–emotional image pair to participants three times. During image pair learning sessions, positive emotions promoted brain activity that could predict how well participants remembered the squiggles a day later.

Thus, according to the authors, positive emotions during learning promote brain activity associated with better memory performance.