Alterations in Pleasantness but Not Activation When Long-Term Memories are Reconstructed during Contextual versus Noncontextual Settings

Abstract

Because the dorsomedial thalamus is a major input to the prefrontal cortices, the reconstruction of experience (episodic memory) that is maximally dependent upon this subcortical structure should be influenced by one of its major correlates, hedonistic tone. University men and women (ns = 20) were shown two brief video-rapes of muricide and copulation among male rats during a lecture concerning instinctual behaviors. Two weeks later the subjects were asked to recall (written narratives) all of the details of the videotapes when they were in either the same or a different context. Although both groups generated similar numbers of words and employed words with comparable activation scores, the group who reconstructed the experiences outside of the context used words with significantly lower (eta = 0.59) pleasantness scores relative to the group who remembered the videotapes within the same setting.