Freshman class II

Memory upgrade

Elizabeth A. Kensinger, assistant professor of psychology

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Specialization: Memory and emotion

Representative publication: "Retrieving Accurate and Distorted Memories: Neuroimaging Evidence for Effects of Emotion," NeuroImage

I became interested in interactions between emotion and memory in graduate school when I studied memory changes in healthy aging adults compared to those in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Caregivers reported that Alzheimer's patients could not remember emotionally significant events that had occurred only a short time ago. It struck me that although many of life's experiences are emotional, the vast majority of research examining memory focuses on situations lacking strong emotions. I resolved to better understand how the mind and brain record experiences of emotional importance and personal significance.

There often is little correlation between the subjective vividness of a memory and its objective accuracy. Research in my laboratory examines the ways in which emotion influences our beliefs about a memory’s accuracy as well as the actual amount of detail that we can remember about an event. We also investigate how the effects of emotion on memory change as individuals age. Our work combines behavioral testing with neuroimaging methods (magnetic resonance imaging) to examine the thought- and brain-level processes that underlie emotions' effect on memories.