(Tali is now at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London)

New York University
Psychology Department

B.A. in Psychology
Tel Aviv University, Israel Class of 1999
M.A., Psychology
New York University, Class of 2002

Research

Emotion: How does it alter our long-term memories?
Looking in and around the brain...

I joined the Phelps lab in the Fall of 2000 after graduating with a BA in Psychology and Economics from Tel Aviv University. My research focuses on the cognitive and neural processes underlying memories of negatively arousing events. Memories of emotional events seem to be more vivid and less fragile than mundane memories: while you might not remember what your spouse/parent/child was saying just last night, you may distinctly remember failing (or acing…) an exam 20 years ago. Why do memories of emotional events seem more vivid than of neutral events? Under what conditions are they more accurate? And are they as accurate as they seem to be? To answer these questions I utilize a combination of behavioral, neuroimaging, and physiological methods to examine emotional memory of both patients with lesions in the medial temporal lobe and healthy controls.

The effect of emotion on the feeling of remembering
Studies examining memories of highly arousing “real life” events, such as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, show that emotion heightens the feeling of remembering (i.e. vividness, recollection and belief in accuracy), without necessarily enhancing the objective accuracy of those memories. We used fMRI in order to identify the mechanisms underlying this phenomena. My findings suggest that for neutral material a heightened feeling of remembering is related to enhanced activity in the parahippocampal cortex, previously related to recognition of visual details, indicating that subjects rely on these details to evaluate neutral memories. This is the type of information expected to supply the retrieval clues for accurate recognition. In contrast, a heightened feeling of remembering for emotional material is associated with enhanced activity in the amygdala, suggesting that subjects rely upon arousal signals to evaluate these memories. This pattern of activation may underlie the exaggerated feeling of remembering emotional events, relative to their actual accuracy.

The effects of emotion on encoding and memory consolidation
Emotional arousal may influence memory both by altering perception and attention during encoding and by modulating memory retention. A series of studies I conducted examined whether enhanced retention of an arousing stimulus occurs even when attention is directed away from the emotional to-be-remembered stimulus. We showed that when attention is controlled subjects remember emotional stimuli better after a delay than immediately after encoding. The results also indicated that subjects remember neutral words better than emotional words at immediate test, but remembered emotional words better than neutral at delay test. These findings indicate that arousal indeed slows forgetting when the effects of arousal on early perceptual processing is minimized.

Publications

Sharot, T. Dudai, Y. (in preparation). The (near) future is bright: how emotion modulates simulation of upcoming events.

Sharot, T., Davidson, M.L, Carson, M.M., Phelps, E.A. (2008). Eye Movements Predict Recollective Experience. PLoS ONE. 3(8), e2884.

Phelps, E.A., Sharot, T. (2008) How (and Why) Emotion Enhances the Subjective Sense of Recollection. Current Trends in Psychological Science. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 17(2), 147-152(6).

Sharot, T. Yonelinas A.P. (2008). Differential time-dependent effects of emotion on the recollective experience and memory for contextual information. Cognition. 106 (1), 538 - 547.

Sharot, T. Riccardi, M.A. Raio, C. M. Phelps, E.A. (2007) Neural Mechanisms Mediating Optimism Bias. Nature. 450 (7166), 102 -105.

*Commentary on the above paper: Schacter, D. L. Addis, D. R. (2007) The optimistic brain. Nature Neuroscience. 10 (11), 1345-1347.

Sharot, T. Verfaellie, M. Yonelinas A.P. (2007). How Emotion Strengthens the Recollective Experience: A Time-Dependent Hippocampal Process. Public Library of Science, One. 2 (10), e1068.

Sharot, T. Martorella, E.A. Delgado, M.R. Phelps, E.A. (2007). How personal experience modulates the neural circuitry of memories of September 11. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: USA. 1 (104), 389-394. [Epub ahead of print 12/2006].

Sharot, T. Delgado, M.R. Phelps, E.A. (2004). How emotion enhances the feeling of remembering. Nature Neuroscience. 7 (12), 1376 – 1380.

Sharot, T. Phelps, E.A. (2004). How Emotional Arousal Modulates Memory: Disentangling the Effects of Attention and Retention. Cognitive Affective Behavioral Neuroscience. 4 (3), 294-306.

Vakil, E. Sharot, T. Markowitz, M. Aberbuch, S. Groswasser Z. (2003). Script memory for typical and atypical actions: controls versus patients with severe closed-head injury. Brain Injury. 17 (10), 825-833 .

Sharot, T. Matthew L. Davidson, Meredith M. Carson, Phelps, E.A. (under review). Eye Movements Predict Recollective Experience.

Conference Presentations

Sharot, T., Johnson, D.J., Raio, C., Dudai, Y. (2008). The (near) future is bright: how emotion modulates simulation of everyday future events. Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Sharot, T. Riccardi, M.A. Phelps, E.A. (2007). Imagining a positive future: The neural mechanism mediating the optimism bias. Neural Systems of Social Behavior.

Sharot, T. Martorella, E.A. Delgado, M.R. Phelps, E.A. (2007). How Personal Experience Modulates the Neural Circuitry of Memories for September 11. Alpine Brain Imaging Meeting.

Sharot, T. Magliulo, S. Phelps, E.A. Yonelinas, A.P. (2006) Emotion enhances the feeling of remembering over time independently from memory for contextual information. Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Sharot, T, Gulbransen, K.P. Magliulo, S. Nguyen, K. Phelps, E.A. Yonelinas. A.P. (2005). Emotion enhances subjective recollection judgments over time via modulation of hippocampal dependent memory consolidation. Society for Neuroscience.

Sharot, T. Davidson, M. L. Carson, M.M. Roth, D. Yau, P. Phelps, E. A. (2005) Emotion Enhances the Feeling of Remembering without Narrowing Attention. Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Sharot, T. Martorella, E.A. Delgado, M.R. Phelps, E.A. (2004). Autobiographical Memories for September 11, 2001: an fMRI Study. Society for Neuroscience.

Sharot, T. Warlaumont, A. Stedenfeld K.A., & Phelps, E.A. (2004). Retrieving Emotionally Arousing Material: The Neural Processes Supporting Recollection and Familiarity. Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Sharot, T. & Phelps, E.A. (2003). Modulation of Memory by Emotional Arousal when Attention is Controlled: The Role of the Medial Temporal Lobe. Society for Neuroscience.

Sharot, T. & Phelps, E.A. (2002). Enhanced Retention of Emotional Stimulus in the Visual Field Periphery. Cognitive Neuroscience Society.