MentalHealthDaily

Emotional Memory fMRI Separates Arousal From Valence

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of brain with amygdala and prefrontal cortex highlighted, conveying dual-pathway emotional memory mechanism.

A 2026 fMRI study of 1,006 healthy young adults found that emotional pictures were remembered better than neutral pictures, but the brain signal split after arousal was modeled: amygdala and insula effects dropped out, while negative and positive valence kept separate cortical encoding patterns.1 Research Highlights Emotional pictures had the recall advantage: in the full …

The Human Affectome: A Unifying Framework of Emotions (2023 Research)

by GLOOM

bThe field of affective sciences, studying emotions, moods, and feelings, has long been fragmented due to diverse theoretical perspectives. A new framework, known as the Human Affectome, proposes a unifying approach grounded in a teleological principle, aiming to cohesively understand human affective phenomena. This framework not only organizes existing research but also sets a direction …