As various racial justice movements emerged under the “Black Lives Matter” slogan after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, artist Monyee Chau posted a piece with the slogan ...#YellowPerilSupportsBlackPower on her Instagram page. The artwork, which depicted a yellow tiger, symbolizing Asians, and a black panther, symbolizing Black Americans, ignited Asian activism in support of Black Americans. In this study, I conceptualize #YellowPerilSupportsBlackPower movement as digital activism and analyze how Asian Americans project their “Asianness” to advocate for the Black community. In particular, I focus on Asian participants’ mediated memory work via Instagram to support the Black community. By identifying three types of affective memory work, I conclude that this affective memory work plays a key role in the legitimizing process through which Asian Americans produce affective ties with the Black community to build a multiracial identity that reaches beyond color lines.
Memory consolidation as an adaptive process Cowan, Emily T.; Schapiro, Anna C.; Dunsmoor, Joseph E. ...
Psychonomic bulletin & review,
12/2021, Volume:
28, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We rely on our long-term memories to guide future behaviors, making it adaptive to prioritize the retention of goal-relevant, salient information in memory. In this review, we discuss findings from ...rodent and human research to demonstrate that active processes during post-encoding consolidation support the selective stabilization of recent experience into adaptive, long-term memories. Building upon literatures focused on dynamics at the cellular level, we highlight that consolidation also transforms memories at the systems level to support future goal-relevant behavior, resulting in more generalized memory traces in the brain and behavior. We synthesize previous literatures spanning animal research, human cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology to propose an integrative framework for adaptive consolidation by which goal-relevant memoranda are “tagged” for subsequent consolidation, resulting in selective transformations to the structure of memories that support flexible, goal-relevant behaviors.
Numerous studies have shown that post-learning sleep enhances visual episodic recognition memory. However, it remains unclear whether this consolidation benefit is moderated by the emotional valence ...of the learned material. To clarify whether sleep selectively enhances memory for emotional material, we conducted a meta-analysis including N = 1059 post-sleep/wake observations. Overall, our results do not support this hypothesis. When only studies with a sleep group/wake group comparison were included in the analysis (k = 22), the retention advantage for emotional (negative/positive) over neutral material was not significantly different between sleep and wake groups. When studies without wake groups were included in the analysis after statistical estimation of wake–group parameters, the retention advantage for emotional material was significantly larger in wake groups than in sleep groups (k = 34). Interestingly, however, an additional analysis of eight studies investigating the selective effects of rapid-eye-movement sleep and slow-wave sleep on post-interval emotional memory provided evidence for a selective enhancement of emotional over neutral memory performance after rapid-eye-movement sleep compared to slow-wave sleep. These findings suggest that sleep does not generally enhance visual recognition memory for emotional stimuli. However, the result pattern is consistent with the idea that specific sleep stages preferentially enhance consolidation of emotional and neutral material, respectively.
Motivational desires usually match predictions of outcome gain. The match is so close that some define desire as nothing more than the prediction of gain.Opposing evidence is presented here that ...desire is psychologically distinct from prediction and has different underlying neural mechanisms. Consequently, desire as incentive salience can separate completely from learned predictions, and can even create desires for outcomes that are remembered and predicted to be bad.The operating rules of incentive salience that power such desires emerge from brain mesolimbic dopamine-related systems.Two laboratory examples are described here to show how desire can separate from learned predictions of value: (i) 'wanting what is remembered to be disgusting', and (ii) 'wanting what is predicted to hurt'.In people, similar separations of motivational desire from outcome prediction can occur in addiction and related clinical conditions.
Individuals typically want what they expect to like, often based on memories of previous positive experiences. However, in some situations desire can decouple completely from memories and from learned predictions of outcome value. The potential for desire to separate from prediction arises from independent operating rules that control motivational incentive salience. Incentive salience, or 'wanting', is a type of mesolimbic desire that evolved for adaptive goals, but can also generate maladaptive addictions. Two proof-of-principle examples are presented here to show how motivational 'wanting' can soar above memory-based predictions of outcome value: (i) 'wanting what is remembered to be disgusting', and (ii) 'wanting what is predicted to hurt'. Consequently, even outcomes remembered and predicted to be negatively aversive can become positively 'wanted'. Similarly, in human addictions, people may experience powerful cue-triggered cravings for outcomes that are not predicted to be enjoyable.
Individuals typically want what they expect to like, often based on memories of previous positive experiences. However, in some situations desire can decouple completely from memories and from learned predictions of outcome value. The potential for desire to separate from prediction arises from independent operating rules that control motivational incentive salience. Incentive salience, or 'wanting', is a type of mesolimbic desire that evolved for adaptive goals, but can also generate maladaptive addictions. Two proof-of-principle examples are presented here to show how motivational 'wanting' can soar above memory-based predictions of outcome value: (i) 'wanting what is remembered to be disgusting', and (ii) 'wanting what is predicted to hurt'. Consequently, even outcomes remembered and predicted to be negatively aversive can become positively 'wanted'. Similarly, in human addictions, people may experience powerful cue-triggered cravings for outcomes that are not predicted to be enjoyable.
•Memory is thought to have modular architecture.•The basis of this idea are dissociation data which reveal the functional specialization of distinct brain areas.•Recent work suggests that ...dissociations are not absolute, but depend on past history of the organism.•This challenge can be solved if modularity is understood from the perspective of network neuroscience.•Neural networks can reconfigure and/or couple functionally to form meta-networks with new functionality.
The multiple memory systems theory (MMS) postulates that the brain stores information based on the independent and parallel activity of a number of modules, each with distinct properties, dynamics, and neural basis. Much of the evidence for this theory comes from dissociation studies indicating that damage to restricted brain areas cause selective types of memory deficits. MMS has been the prevalent paradigm in memory research for more than thirty years, even as it has been adjusted several times to accommodate new data. However, recent empirical results indicating that the memory systems are not always dissociable constitute a challenge to fundamental tenets of the current theory because they suggest that representations formed by individual memory systems can contribute to more than one type of memory-driven behavioral strategy. This problem can be addressed by applying a dynamic network perspective to memory architecture. According to this view, memory networks can reconfigure or transiently couple in response to environmental demands. Within this context, the neural network underlying a specific memory system can act as an independent unit or as an integrated component of a higher order meta-network. This dynamic network model proposes a way in which empirical evidence that challenges the idea of distinct memory systems can be incorporated within a modular memory architecture. The model also provides a framework to account for the complex interactions among memory systems demonstrated at the behavioral level. Advances in the study of dynamic networks can generate new ideas to experimentally manipulate and control memory in basic or clinical research.
Studies recurrently emphasise the critical role played by memory in the production of belonging in the context of deindustrialisation. This paper examines the interrelations of memory, history and ...belonging among former coal miners in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield surrounding Mansfield, UK, an area of complex and contested memories and histories. Couched in the approaches of emotional geographies and the ‘turn to affect’, the paper investigates the emotional and affective dimensions of remembering histories of the coal industry under nationalisation between 1947 and 1994 including job security, the 1984–1985 miners' strike and colliery closures, as well as the industrial ruination which these closures caused. To fully apprehend and empathise with the emotional processes of memory, the paper contends that memories must always be situated within a reading of the wider historical geographies and politics upon which they are constituted. Drawing on archival research and psychosocial life history interviews, the paper broadly argues that historicising memories as well as examining their affective dimensions advances understanding into what has been lost and disrupted through localised processes of deindustrialisation and postindustrialism. In the case of north Nottinghamshire the contested solidarities of the miners' strike and subsequent colliery closures have endured in affective memories which, in turn, have problematised the production of individual and collective belonging.
•Advances understanding of the affective processes of memory and belonging.•Investigates histories and memories of the north Nottinghamshire coalfield.•Argues for greater archival research in studies of memory and deindustrialisation.•Argues that belonging in the coalfield is mediated by complex and traumatic pasts.•Demonstrates the usefulness of psychosocial methods to research on memory.
We developed the Verbal Affective Memory Test-26 (VAMT-26), a computerized test to assess verbal memory, as an improvement of the Verbal Affective Memory Test-24 (VAMT-24). Here, we psychometrically ...evaluate the VAMT-26 in 182 healthy controls, examine 1-month test–retest stability in 48 healthy controls, and examine whether 87 antidepressant-free patients diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) tested with VAMT-26 differed in affective memory biases from 335 healthy controls tested with VAMT24/26. We also examine whether affective memory biases are associated with depressive symptoms across the patients and healthy controls. VAMT-26 showed good psychometric properties. Age, sex, and IQ, but not education, influenced VAMT-26 scores. VAMT-26 scores converged satisfactorily with scores on a test associated with non-affective verbal memory. Test–retest analyses showed a learning effect and a
r
≥ 0.0.8, corresponding to a typical variation of 10% in recalled words from first to second test. Patients tended to remember more negative words relative to positive words compared to healthy controls at borderline significance (
p
= 0.06), and affective memory biases were negatively associated with depressive symptoms across the two groups at borderline significance (
p
= 0.07), however, the effect sizes were small. Future studies are needed to address whether VAMT-26 can be used to distinguish between depression subtypes in patients with MDD. As a verbal memory test, VAMT-26 is a well validated neuropsychological test and we recommend it to be used in Danish and international studies on affective memory.
To understand the differences in affective memory performance under different degrees of cognitive impairment, this study recruited older people with different degrees of cognitive impairment, to ...perform emotion recognition memory tasks.
Fifty-four elderly participants aged (65-85 years) were recruited. Of these, 18 had mild cognitive impairment, 18 had a mild form of Alzheimer's disease, and the remaining 18 were healthy. Factors such as the different emotional valences (positive, neutral, or negative) and stimulus types (pictures, words, or sounds) were manipulated to explore their influences on the emotion recognition memory of people with different degrees of cognitive impairment.
The results showed that people's performance to positive stimuli worsened as their degree of cognitive impairment increased. All participants had difficulty processing memory of affective sound stimuli compared to the other two stimulus types.
The results explain the decline in the cognitive ability process, in affective memory performance, of people with different degrees of cognitive impairment. This abnormal decline on affective memory performance could be an early diagnostic indicator of Alzheimer's disease. The results can hopefully be used as a reference for subsequent research on cognition-related diseases and age-related decline, especially regarding affective memory.
Studies have shown that individuals with emotional disorders expect and recall more negative and less positive information than healthy individuals. However, no study of emotional disorders has ...investigated affective forecasting
and
affective memory within the same individuals. Using ecological momentary assessment, we compared daily affective experiences to forecasts and memories in 145 adults with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), major depressive disorder (MDD), comorbid GAD/MDD, or no psychopathology. All three clinical groups forecast, experienced, and remembered more negative affect than controls; positive affect showed the opposite pattern, which was especially robust for the depressed groups. All clinical groups demonstrated stronger negative forecasting and memory biases as well as a weaker positive forecasting bias than controls. However, when the independent contributions of symptom dimensions were analyzed, MDD severity was associated with a negative forecasting bias while GAD severity was associated with a negative memory bias. Cognitive representations of emotional experiences in GAD and MDD are biased in ways that may maintain the disorders and represent promising intervention targets.
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