Browsing by Subject "emotionaalinen episodinen muisti"

This essay is about differences between men and women in emotional episodic memory both in behavioral level and in neural correlates. These differences are compared to sex differences in emotions and neutral episodic memory. Research on emotional episodic memory and its sex differences can offer a new viewpoint to sexes’ different risks of different mental disorders. Prior research has found that women score higher in both neutral and emotional episodic memory tests compared to men. Evidence also suggests that women tend to assess emotional stimuli more arousing and assess stimuli’s valence as more extreme i.e. categorize emotional stimuli more often as something else than neutral. Sex differences in neural correlates of emotional episodic memory were studied in amygdala, prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe. Most notable difference was found in amygdala which had different functional lateralization between sexes so that in women left amygdala and in men right amygdala predicted better emotional episodic memory. Research considering prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe has been inconclusive. Sex differences in neural correlates of neutral episodic memory haven’t been found but emotion research has found partially consistent results with emotional episodic memory research – amygdala activation is clustered in the left in women and in the right in men. In conclusion, this evidence suggests that the activation of left amygdala may contribute to better emotional episodic memory in women and that the effect is based on the emotions’ memory modulating properties.