Introduction Investigations into the impact of affect in memory processing have demonstrated that arousing events are remembered better than non-arousing events. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the incidental encoding of mildly positive affective words selectively activates the amygdala and the medial frontal regions. During scanning, words were visually presented in a pre-determined random order for two seconds.
Participants read each word aloud.
Participants were unaware that a recall and then a forced-choice recognition memory test would follow. Five healthy adults served as participants. The whole brain was imaged. The event-related analysis procedure was used to analyze the data. A priori, we hypothesized increased amygdala, anterior cingulate and medial frontal activation for the affective words.