Neuronal population representation of human emotional memory
Dustin Fetterhoff,
Manuela Costa,
Robin Hellerstedt,
Rebecca Johannessen,
Lukas Imbach,
Johannes Sarnthein,
Bryan A. Strange
Affiliations
Dustin Fetterhoff
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain; Corresponding author
Manuela Costa
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain
Robin Hellerstedt
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain
Rebecca Johannessen
Swiss Epilepsy Center, Klinik Lengg, Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Lukas Imbach
Swiss Epilepsy Center, Klinik Lengg, Zurich, Switzerland; Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Johannes Sarnthein
Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Bryan A. Strange
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain; Reina Sofia Centre for Alzheimer’s Research, Madrid, Spain
Summary: Understanding how emotional processing modulates learning and memory is crucial for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by emotional memory dysfunction. We investigate how human medial temporal lobe (MTL) neurons support emotional memory by recording spiking activity from the hippocampus, amygdala, and entorhinal cortex during encoding and recognition sessions of an emotional memory task in patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy. Our findings reveal distinct representations for both remembered compared to forgotten and emotional compared to neutral scenes in single units and MTL population spiking activity. Additionally, we demonstrate that a distributed network of human MTL neurons exhibiting mixed selectivity on a single-unit level collectively processes emotion and memory as a network, with a small percentage of neurons responding conjointly to emotion and memory. Analyzing spiking activity enables a detailed understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying emotional memory and could provide insights into how emotion alters memory during healthy and maladaptive learning.
