Emotion s Effects on Attention and Memory: Relevance to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

by Katherine Mickley Steinmetz, Elizabeth Kensinger

Attentional processes, engaged during an event's unfolding, are essential for allowing us to transform an experience into a memory, and emotion can critically modulate those attentional processes, increasing the likelihood that an emotional experience becomes part of our memory stores. This book reviews behavioral and neuroimaging evidence that has revealed effects of emotion on memory and attention in individuals with and without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with particular emphasis on how emotion influences the attentional processes that allow individuals to transform experiences into a memory, the differences in the way emotional items are remembered and current controversies regarding the uniqueness of traumatic memories in PTSD.

Paperback

First published September 1, 2010