Scientists study links between emotions, learning and memory

Most teachers would agree: Students participate in class and learn lessons best when they feel good about themselves and their lives. But nobody understands precisely what is involved in the relationship between emotions and learning.

Seven national experts speaking at the eighth annual Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion, to be held at Monona Terrace April 18-19, will discuss their own research and perspectives on various aspects of the complex and important relationship between learning and emotions. The meeting is called “Affect, Learning and Memory: Basic Neuroscience and Clinical Implications.”

“It’s interesting to note that the brain structures that underlie learning and memory are the very same structures that regulate many kinds of emotions, but we really don’t know the mechanisms by which emotions influence learning and vice versa,” says Ned Kalin, director of the HealthEmotions Research Institute, which is sponsoring the symposium.

“Understanding more about these relations may allow us to better promote learning in young children as well as in adults. One intriguing question is whether the activation of the brain circuits that underlie positive emotion would result in enhanced learning and memory,” Kalin says.

Several aspects of the emotions-learning-memory axis will be covered at the symposium. These include: the ability of emotionally charged events to enhance memory; the role of stress in reducing brain cells involved in learning; the influence of stress on memory loss during aging; the importance of sleep in fixing memories; the connections
between cues, memory and addictive behavior; and the involvement of the amygdala, which is closely linked to fear and other emotions, in learning.

The roster of symposium speakers includes: Michael Davis of Emory University, who will speak on “Neural Systems Involved in Fear, Anxiety and Extinction”; Sonia Lupien of McGill University, “The Differential Impact of Stress and Emotion on Human Memory: Hormonal Implications”; James L. McGaugh, University of California, Irvine, “Making Lasting Explicit Memories of Emotional Experiences: Roles of Stress Hormones and Interacting Brain Systems.”

Elizabeth A. Phelps of New York University will discuss “The Human Amygdala and Episodic Memory”; Robert M. Sapolsky, Stanford University, “Glucocorticoids and Rebuilding the Hippocampal Response to Stress”; Elliot A. Stein, Medical College of Wisconsin, “Neurobiology of Human Drug Craving and Addiction”; and Robert A. Stickgold, Harvard Medical School “Sleep: Offline Memory and Emotion Reprocessing.”

The HealthEmotions Research Institute has sponsored the annual symposium for five years. First started by UW psychology professor and emotions researcher Richard Davidson in 1995, the symposia have come to attract international attention as the preeminent annual meeting on the neuroscience of emotion.

The meeting does more than serve as the setting for presentations on the latest findings by the finest minds in the field. An equally important objective is exposing students at all levels to the discipline.

“One aspect of the institute’s mission is to train a new generation of scientists equipped to address the complex, interdisciplinary relations involved in the study of emotions, a field that has tremendous potential for improving health,” says Kalin, who is also chair of the UW Medical School psychiatry department. “We are committed to attracting the brightest new talent to the symposium. The Travel Award Program helps us do that.”

Through private donations, the institute-sponsored program provides travel and accommodation support for 85 postdoctoral trainees, medical students, residents, and graduate and undergraduate students from across the United States, Canada and abroad.

The HealthEmotions Research Institute was created in 1996, one of the first research organizations of its kind at major university. Its mission is to scientifically examine emotions and their far-ranging effects on health, particularly the impact of positive emotions.

Researchers at the institute are striving to: identify brain mechanisms and chemicals that control and express positive emotions; describe factors that determine individual differences in the experience of positive emotions; establish how neural circuits involved in positive emotions are linked to the cardiovascular, immune, endocrine and gastrointestinal systems; and understand the degree to which systems involved in positive emotion and their links to physiological systems are malleable.