Adaptive emotional memory: The key hippocampal-amygdalar interaction
Stress. 2015-05-04; 18(3): 297-308
DOI: 10.3109/10253890.2015.1067676
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1. Stress. 2015;18(3):297-308. Epub 2015 Aug 11.
Adaptive emotional memory: the key hippocampal-amygdalar interaction.
Desmedt A(1)(2)(3), Marighetto A(1)(2), Richter-Levin G(3)(4), Calandreau L(5).
Author information:
(1)a INSERM, Neurocentre Magendie, Physiopathologie de la plasticité neuronale,
U862 , Bordeaux , France .
(2)b Université de Bordeaux, Neurocentre Magendie, Physiopathologie de la
plasticité neuronale, U862 , Bordeaux , France .
(3)c Laboratoire Européen Associé , French-Israel Laboratory of Neuroscience (LEA
FILNE) , France — Israel .
(4)d Brain and Behavior Laboratory, Haifa University, Mount Carmel , Haifa ,
Israel , and.
(5)e Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) Centre de Tours
Nouzilly , CNRS UMR , Nouzilly , France.
For centuries philosophical and clinical studies have emphasized a fundamental
dichotomy between emotion and cognition, as, for instance, between
behavioral/emotional memory and explicit/representative memory. However, the last
few decades cognitive neuroscience have highlighted data indicating that emotion
and cognition, as well as their underlying neural networks, are in fact in close
interaction. First, it turns out that emotion can serve cognition, as exemplified
by its critical contribution to decision-making or to the enhancement of episodic
memory. Second, it is also observed that reciprocally cognitive processes as
reasoning, conscious appraisal or explicit representation of events can modulate
emotional responses, like promoting or reducing fear. Third, neurobiological data
indicate that reciprocal amygdalar-hippocampal influences underlie such mutual
regulation of emotion and cognition. While supporting this view, the present
review discusses experimental data, obtained in rodents, indicating that the
hippocampal and amygdalar systems not only regulate each other and their
functional outcomes, but also qualify specific emotional memory representations
through specific activations and interactions. Specifically, we review consistent
behavioral, electrophysiological, pharmacological, biochemical and imaging data
unveiling a direct contribution of both the amygdala and hippocampal-septal
system to the identification of the predictor of a threat in different situations
of fear conditioning. Our suggestion is that these two brain systems and their
interplay determine the selection of relevant emotional stimuli, thereby
contributing to the adaptive value of emotional memory. Hence, beyond the mutual
quantitative regulation of these two brain systems described so far, we develop
the idea that different activations of the hippocampus and amygdala, leading to
specific configurations of neural activity, qualitatively impact the formation of
emotional memory representations, thereby producing either adaptive or
maladaptive fear memories.
PMID: 26260664 [Indexed for MEDLINE]